More New Info on BP8
John N. Hodges
Software. He clarifies some of the info from the previous quote, and also
gave permission to be quoted.
----------------------------Start Quote-------------------------------
Thanks for posting the message about Delphi95 announcement. I'd just like to clear up a
few ambiguities in your report, though (I went to ALL the Delphi95 talks, as did many
other Pascal people there).
Ship date: no one will say, although Philippe mentioned 'within the next 6 months' and
'only when it's ready and rock solid'. A September ship date is a rumour.
It was my impression that the back-end compiler technology for C++ and Pascal would not
be present in version 1 of Delphi95. There was some discussion amongst ourselves
(various TeamB'ers and myself) that what the announcement means is that the parser
would be language-specific (obviously), it would generate some kind of intermediate
p-code, which would then be converted to machine code by the 'common' compiler.
HOWEVER, one of the things Borland were *really* stressing about Delphi95 was its
*speed* at compiling/linking. So, I'd wait and see on that point; someone remembered
Philippe saying the same thing years ago when Borland had 4 compilers (Basic and Prolog
as well).
Some of the demos showed VBX controls that were dropped on the form. The spreadsheet
was one of those (it is the one available in the Visual Solutions Pack). There was no
indication what would be shipped with the product.
Re: SQL. One of the talks showed SQL being used in the product. It's there now. Borland
are stressing that this is a client/server application builder.
The new object library is called VCL (Visual Component Library). It is *not* OWL,
especially it is not OWL 2.0. You can compile BP7 source code with Delphi95.
32-bit compilation may or may not be supported in version 1. The only thing the
Borlanders stated definitely is that VCL has been written with 32-bit in mind. Also,
providing you take (reasonable) care (ie don't assume that an integer is 16 bits) you
will be able to compile your code as 32-bit code with no changes when the compiler
arrives. 32-bit IS being worked on.
I would just like to say that I personally am very very impressed with Delphi95: it
gives me the same sense of fun and adventure as when I first played around with TP 2.0.
And of course we at TurboPower will be supporting Delphi95 fully.
Cheers, Julian (TurboPower Software)
-----------------------------end quote -----------------------------------
---
* LT Nick Hodges, USN Naval Postgraduate School *
* jnho...@nps.navy.mil Information Technology Management *
* CIS: 71563,2250 AOL: NHodges Monterey, CA *
* "A man's gotta know his limitations...." - Clint Eastwood *
Bob Swart
I was also one of the visitors in Orlando (heck, I even did one talk about
'Borland Pascal Performance Optimization' - L089), and I think I can add some
more information about DELPHI-95...
For starters, and IMHO this was really a BIG thing, DELPHI-95 will be 100%
downwards compatible with all TP/BP7 source code. So although we now have to
use 'class' (instead of object) and VCL (instead of OWL), we can still
recompile our old programs with DELPHI-95. Of course, only Windows apps.
Another thing, and this is really neat for all those C++ fans: DELPHI-95 will
contain several new language features and extensions like.... exceptions!! Yes,
full-blown exceptions. A kind of like the C++ ones, but different. For one
thing they traverse the stack frame, so you cannot 'resume' from a raised
exception, but you can put some code in a special block (finally) that is to be
excecuted after the exception is handled. If you want to know more about
exceptions, either check out the BIC '94 proceedings, or read the second issue
of The Pascal Magazine (I'll be writing more about them there).
Now, we finally know where the 'code-name' Visual Basic Killer came from:
DELPHI-95 is capable of generating Pascal code (althoug Borland people called
it 'Object Pascal' instead of 'Borland Pascal') which is then *compiled* into a
fast .EXE file. The minimum overhead of VCL (+ exceptions!) is about 120K, if I
understood things correctly, but that is for a stand-alone .EXE without any
external .DLL or .VBX files.
DELPHI-95 was said to be 16-bit only, for the moment, so .OCX support was
planned for a future 32-bit version (DELPHI-96? <grin>...)
> I would just like to say that I personally am very very impressed with
> Delphi95: it gives me the same sense of fun and adventure as when I first
> played around with TP 2.0.
I completely agree with Julian here!
> And of course we at TurboPower will be supporting Delphi95 fully.
I think I'm really glad to hear this statement!! This means (I hope) that all
(or at least some) my favorite TurboPower tools will be made available for
DELPHI-95 in the future...
> Cheers, Julian (TurboPower Software)
Groetjes,
Bob (bo...@dragons.nest.nl)
Berend de Boer
BS> source code. So although we now have to use 'class' (instead
BS> of object) and VCL (instead of OWL), we can still recompile
He, it seems they are conforming to the Extended Pascal OOP extensions.
Do you know more about Extended Pascal compatability?
Groetjes,
Berend (-:
fido: 2:281/527.23
email: ber...@beard.nest.nl
dst...@max.tiac.net
: He, it seems they are conforming to the Extended Pascal OOP extensions.
: Do you know more about Extended Pascal compatability?
I was also at the Borlando Conference. Although I am not familiar with the
Extended Pascal OOP extensions, I was always under the impression that
the extensions that Borland added to the Delphi Environment were
unique to this system.
In general, what are the Extended Pascal OOP extensions ?
(You may want to post this in a new thread)
Duncan Murdoch
>
>In general, what are the Extended Pascal OOP extensions ?
Here's a quick summary from a September 93 draft. If John Reagan is
reading, he can probably tell you if there have been any changes (or errors
in my summary):
Objects are declared using the reserved word CLASS, not OBJECT. The
compiler uses a reference model, which means that a variable of some CLASS
should be seen as a reference to the object, not the object itself. (This
is a lot like a pointer to an object in BP, but you don't need to
dereference it.)
There is a Root class that is part of the language, and every
other "concrete" class is a descendant of it. It has a few methods; I
forget what they are.
You can have forward declarations of a class type, without defining what is
in it.
There are 3 kinds of classes: Concrete, Abstract, and Property. Normal
classes are concrete. Abstract classes are used to define abstract
methods. Property classes are used in multiple inheritance: you can't have
common ancestors to multiple parents, so only one concrete class can be a
parent.
There are also VIEWs, which are descendants of a CLASS where only some
parts are visible.
There's a special value Null which is a lot like Nil, but is for objects,
not pointers.
These are the big parts that I remember and can pick out from a quick scan
through the draft. There are lots more details, of course. My feeling
when I first read it was that it was more or less a waste of
time, since it is drastically different from the current Borland model;
perhaps I was wrong, if Borland is moving that way.
Duncan Murdoch
Jean Ichbiah
>
>Another thing, and this is really neat for all those C++ fans: DELPHI-95 will
>full-blown exceptions. A kind of like the C++ ones, but different. For one
>thing they traverse the stack frame, so you cannot 'resume' from a raised
>excecuted after the exception is handled. If you want to know more about
>exceptions, either check out the BIC '94 proceedings, or read the second issue
>of The Pascal Magazine (I'll be writing more about them there).
>
From your description of exceptions, they appear to be identical to Ada
exceptions. Borland Pascal is moving gradually to the functionality of
Ada - and of course offers a superior Windows development facility.
Jean D. Ichbiah
--
Jean D. Ichbiah
ich...@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu
JL Allison
(Jean Ichbiah) writes:
Now, if Borland will only implement generics (wishful thinking, they
should do it like Ada)