On Mon, 7 Jul 1997 17:55:36 +0200 (MET DST) Peter Gerwinski peter@agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de wrote:

[...]

This is the point where I must ask: What you mean with "Delphi"?

So far, I have seen four definitions:

1. the language definition,

2. the compiler (including compiler switches and such),

3. the compiler and the VCL, or

4. the compiler, the VCL, and development tools (the IDE plus all the tools for "visual programming").

When speaking about Delphi compatibility for GPC I refer to meaning #1 above.

#1 will suffice for me.

#2 is out of range, but one can work around this by using (*$ifdef*)s for incompatible compiler switches. (* There is only one thing in GPC preventing us from really doing so: the missing {$ifopt x+}. That's still planned. *) Most people who want to have a Delphi-com- patible system mean #4, but could live with #3, too. What I personally aim is #1, but I am almost sure that once we have #1, somebody else will create #3, and perhaps even #4. :-)

I don't think #3 is of any use without #4 (i.e., why have the VCL without the IDE, the object inspector, and the object repository?). Realistically, if we can achieve #1 (i.e., support Delphi's "Object Pascal" language) then I think the rest will happen as people write their own classes, and maybe even a class library based on Object Pascal.

Best regards, The Chief Dr Abimbola A. Olowofoyeku (The African Chief, and the Great Elephant) Author of: Chief's Installer Pro v3.60 for Win16 and Win32. Homepage: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/African_Chief/ E-mail: laa12@cc.keele.ac.uk