[Lazarus] newbie questions

[Sven Barth]

Am 01.06.2012 12:05, schrieb Marco Ciampa:
> 1) is this a developers only ml? Am I in the wrong list to ask general usage
>     questions? I case vould you (please) point me to the right ml? TIA
>

Yes, this is the correct list.

>   - FreePascal is a Dos app. , really ugly as was TP 20 years ago with
>     similar concern regarding the multiuser use with Win...
>

You need to differentiate here:
1. Free Pascal is a compiler and thus the tool you use for compiling 
your Pascal code
2. The IDE is called fp (or also "text mode IDE") and this is not a DOS 
application (ok... a DOS version also exists, but only if you download 
it ;) ). It's a normal Windows command line application and uses the 
Windows Console API. fp also works on other platforms like Linux and OS/2.

> Ok now the real questions:
>
> 1) it "uses windows, graph;" where can I find reference info, examples
>     and other doc about these libs?
>

If you use unit "graph" you will at the end have a application that is 
also a "DOS application" (though it's not DOS per se) that you critized 
the text mode IDE above for. If you really want to use Lazarus to its 
fullest (thus writing GUI applications), I suggest you to read a 
tutorial like those available here: 
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Documentation#Lazarus_and_Pascal_Tutorials

> 2) if I vould like to port this program under Linux I imagine that the
>     "windows" lib could be unusable. The shortest way to do it is ... ?
>     Hints on how to do it are where?


Basically one can use unit Windows, but then you must use "ifdef" and 
other units and functions/procedures for other platforms. In Lazarus and 
it's component library LCL this is mostly abstracted and if you don't 
need specific Windows API functions most needs can be satisifed by 
looking into the units LCLProc, LCLType and LCLIntf though quite often 
you won't need all.

Regards,
Sven