Hi everybody.

My name is Johan Larsson and I am the author of an application framework named EFLIB ("Extended Function Library"). EFLIB is primarily a set of data structures - like linked lists, trees, stacks, queues - streams, filters (conversion, searching algorithms), conversion, text handling, professional math OO classes (numerical methods, math objects such as integer class, complex numbers, matrixes, vectors, expressions, etc) and some other things. EFLIB is also intended to - within reasonable time - contain a full GUI. For more information, see http://www.ts.umu.se/~jola/EFLIB/.

I am writing to you since I am trying to get in contact with people who can and want to port my works for the Borland dialect of Pascal to other languages such as Delphi, FPK and GNU Pascal -- and any other language which could profit by getting a standardized class library. I also look for partners all around the world. Maybe you have some material you would like to publish together with EFLIB or as a free EFLIB-friendly product (see http://www.ts.umu.se/~jola/EFLIB/Developing/Friends/)?

Why choose EFLIB? First of all, EFLIB will be distributed freely with source and all - that is, as soon as the juridical details have been worked out by Swedish layers (within a week or maybe a month). EFLIB can thus be used by any Pascal programmer with non-commercial objectives. Furthermore, EFLIB is written in a somewhat different way than other tools I have seen around. I have tried to create an object-oriented framework that promote extendiblity into every single detail. For example, all data structures (or rather: ADTs) share common properties defined in abstract base classes. The same thing goes with math classes, streams and so on. Finally, EFLIB is well- documented since almost 50% of the source code is source code comments. I therefore believe that EFLIB is suitable as a multi-platform Pascal class library that can grow within time - it can be improved and extended whenever the user's or developer's want it to.

Is EFLIB portable? Yes, I believe so! A high grade of extendibility, modularity and a high-level of abstraction tend to make platform conversions easier. Also, EFLIB does not contain any important MS-DOS-specifics (other than one or two assembler in-lines and a few procedures which is not much when one consider that EFLIB is based on at least 20,000 lines of source code).

I have been working on EFLIB for a long time. Not all EFLIB components I have produced are yet published. I have established a certain network of programmers, provide mailing list services, an EFLIB FTP site, SimtelNet distribution and WWW services.

Summary: I am looking for people who would like to help me to create a standardized class library for every Pascal programmer.

Best Regards, Johan Larsson jola@ts.umu.se

PS. For more information about EFLIB, please feel free to check out the following URLs:

- http://www.ts.umu.se/~jola/EFLIB/ - http://www.ts.umu.se/~jola/EFLIB/Manual/ - http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/lang/EFLIB/