[Lazarus] How to program with time in milliseconds?

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sat, 17 May 2014, Tom Lisjac wrote:

> Dear Mr. Michael Van Canneyt,
> 
> I'm adding some clarification and context to your ongoing comments about EpikTimer in this and other threads.
> 
> << Snip EpikTimer code>>
> 
> >Why you would not use fpnanosleep on CPUX86_64 as well is a mystery to me...
> 
> There's no mystery here. I wrote EpikTimer in 2003 with a few months of experience on a 32 bit version of Lazarus. The code still works, but a lot has changed around it
> over the last 11 years.
> 
> > Epiktimer is probably the most overrated component on lazarus-ccr. No idea why people still recommend it, unless I missed something :(
> 
> No mystery here either. You never miss an opportunity to criticize EpikTimer for reasons I've never been able to understand.

Nevertheless, I have named the reasons explicitly every time.

It is simply frustrating to see that people ask for something cross-platform, *better than Now()*
for timing, and then epiktimer is recommended. Never fails.

Your component is probably perfectly suited for Intel 32-bit. On other platforms, it simply is not: 
there, one might as well use Now() directly, since that is what epiktimer uses.

I realize that my repeated critique sounds harsh; But, please, do not take the critique personal:

Your part (Intel 32-bit) undoubtedly is good for the job. I have never judged that.
It is the repeatedly acclaimed support for other platforms that I am having serious difficulties with.

The day that part is rewritten, you will no longer hear a peep from me. 
Before writing, I always check in the hope that someone finally took up the challenge and made it better 
than now() on non-i386 platforms. Till now, I was always disappointed.

Several useful suggestions have been made already in the course of this thread. 
Maybe someone will finally take up the challenge.

Michael.