Re: Pascal Compilers

On Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 11:35:06AM +0100, Aitor Santamaria Merino wrote:

> >Well for programs compiled with FreePascal (FPC) you need a 386 and
> >dpmi support. The same is true with GNU Pascal (GPC), I think.
> >
> Well, are there programs compiled in FPC?

In FreeDOS? Not yet.
But I think it's a pitty to work on a free OS with nonfree compilers.

> I just want to clarify that xkeyb compiles with TurboPascal7 (I'd like 
> to try with 5.5). It was one of the reasons that I took over, I wanted 
> to have it working, and nobody seemed to dare to take over a project in 
> Pascal (?)

Well, I wasn't here yet. ;-)

> At this moment, I am rewriting the "core", that will be mainly in 
> assembler instead of Pascal, in order to reduce the memory footprint to 
> a minimum.
> I could try and port to C, but I just don't want to rewrite the "X" 
> stuff (Xstrings and Xfunctions) in C, it's not worth I think. Perhaps it 
> could help if I knew how to get a .O file from a TP Unit. (This is for 
> granted in FreePascal).

There's also a Pascal to C converter (p2c).
Perhaps that can help you.

> >Is there any free 16Bit Pascal Compiler?
> >(I mean "free" not "for free")
> >
> Not that I know of.

:-(((

> I seem to understand that the improvements (Units, for example) Borland 
> introduced in TP over standard Pascal (and that left the "Why Pascal 
> isn't..." paper by Kernighan
> obsolete) appeared themselves in some Pascal language standarization 
> papers (I don't have references here about this).

1. "improvements [...] over standard Pascal": 
   You seem to think, that BP is just an extention to standard Pascal.
   But that is not true!
   Borland Pascal had never been fully compatible with standard 
   "Pascal" (ISO-7185).

2. "Units": 
   I think you confuse Units with Modules, as they are defined in 
   "Extended Pascal" (ISO-10206). This standard defines a lot of
   things, that are missing in Borland Pascal.

(BTW. Borland Pascal became mostly compatible with the 
 ISO/ANSI draft for "Object Pascal", as it changed from the 
 "object" to the "class" model)

> There are also TMTPascal and Pascal32, that I haven't tried, 

Do you have any links?

> but I guess 
> that TP/Delphi compatibility, and compatibility with popular C 
> compilers, DJGPP/cygwin/gcc for multiple platforms seemed to be the 
> general choice after Borland products.

I don't think, that there can only be one!

-- 
Tschuess
	Andreas