[Lazarus] TLMMouseEvent now lacks "state"

[Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 2:25 PM, Graeme Geldenhuys
<graemeg.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Consider saying goodbye to about 4 years of your life. :) Wouldn't it
> simply be easier to work on LCL-fpGUI widgetset interface instead?

Easier, maybe yes, but:

* Part of the work is to build controls to use the existing LCL apps.
I need a custom drawn TTrackBar with a special skin, a custom drawn
TListView and other punctual components. A new widgetset would be all
or nothing, then my applications won't work until it is totally
finished, but I need them now for some concrete projects... and I also
need the skinning capability... summing up I need many TCD* components
anyway regardless of any custom drawn widgetset.

* Part of this work is aimed at making it easier to port the LCL. If I
write LCL-fpgui I won't solve my problem. I'll have to port fpgui
instead for new platforms. That's a huge complicator, I can't imagine
how I could port fpgui to Android, I suppose that would be extremely
difficult for me to adapt fpgui to atend all the particularities of
the platform, but I already know the LCL very well, so here I already
know everything that I need to do.

But I am not worried if it turns out to be too big of a task for me,
my controls can be used in existing LCL widgetsets, so my work won't
be wasted. I took care of choosing the architecture very well.

> From your posts of the last few months I have noticed you seem to like
> customdrawn components more and more.
>
> Maybe now you understand my view with fpGUI. ;-) For cross platform apps, or for total
> flexibility, you can't beat customdrawn components.

Short story: Microsoft killing Windows Mobile was the big motivator

Actually I have since years wanted to do this, but I simply gave up on
the whole idea considering it too big of a task for many years. Then I
worked a lot on LCL-WinCE and what happened in the end? It was much,
much worse then if I had started a custom drawn widgetset from the
start. People running Microsoft (and Apple and even Ubuntu) are
totally despisable. Microsoft didn't even blink while killing years of
work that I put into LCL-WinCE. Apple killed Carbon and the Ubuntu
guys have fun adding unfinished features that break Gtk2 apps.

Writing code for APIs created by those guys is what I call putting
years in the trash bin. Writing a custom drawn set of controls is
something they cannot kill that easily. It will last as long as native
code exists, and even in the case of a move like Microsoft did you
still didn't waste that much time, all the generic work is preserved
and can be reused in another platform.

Native look? I couldn't care any less each day that passes with
Microsoft pushing Ribbons, which actually are already obsoleted by
Metro =D It is a jungle. They change their native look every couple of
years. Not to mention how html apps are getting more fashionable, you
can't get any less native then that. But people that want native look
can always write skins.

All I want is to be able to port the LCL to new platforms with a
minimum of work and with a minimum of time loss when whatever bigshot
director trashes the platform that I am working with now. And custom
drawn is the way to go, there is no doubt about that.

-- 
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho