Frank,
Thanks very much for the helpful info on location of fpc copying rights and on location of current version. (I don't know how they find stuff in the fpc archives, packages, sources...) I'm very glad to now be working from the most recent source version.
One construction I'm not sure on translation of is:
function beep:longint; cdecl;external libncurses; function can_change_color:bool; cdecl;external libncurses; function cbreak:longint; cdecl;external libncurses;
The fpc "cdecl;' makes the calling sequence of Pascal match that of c. (see the table from FPC manual at end of this email; its a graphic file, sorry, I couldn't get a good text cut.) It appears 'cdecl' is the default for gpc (true?), thus, for gpc I think these could be declared, somewhat like the external variables were, as, e.g.:
function beep:longint; external libncurses;
However, gpc does not like the library name after external and gives the error
... error: syntax error before `libncurses'
So I can resolve the syntax error by shortening it to just:
function beep:longint; external;
But I'm left wondering why the prior author thought he needed to specify the libncurses...
So, two questions: 1. Am I correct in assuming that no parallel to FPC's 'cdecl' is needed for calls from GPC to C? 2. Is there a way to specify the library source for a function call, as it is done with external variables? Or, conversely, can I assume that this isn't needed?
Thanks,
Willett Kempton