On Thursday 21 November 2002 3:16 pm, Prof. A Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) wrote:
On 21 Nov 2002 at 15:39, Marco van de Voort wrote:
[...]
IMHO it is no use to support a subset of a dialect (e.g. Delphi), and not at least strive to go all the way in the long run.
Compability is of little use in practice if it requires more changes than once every 100 lines. (and that is libraries + language)
(one can of course strive for a lesser version than the newest Delphi version at first)
I agree. This discussion does raise a fundamental question - should GPC aim for Delphi-compatibility at all? BP is a closed target, and therefore BP compatibility alone might not lead us anywhere except to provide a fixed point of reference - the same goes for ISO 7185 and ISO 10206. They are all not going any other place anytime soon.
Is there anyway that you could introduce compatibility for users that want it by using a compatibility library or compiler switch?
Its a simple logic really :
The people who don't want compatibility won't use it so won't care if compatibility is there or not.
The people who *do* want it won't be happy if compatibility isn't there.
Thus, you might as well add compatibility, but get someone who *wants* it to maintain it. Then everyone is happy, and GPC gets a wider audience.
As long as it doesn't interfere with "normal" Pascal, I don't see what the issue is, other than the effort to add it - which would be the effort of someone who wants the compatibility....