From: marcov@stack.nl   
      
   On 2007-08-23, Robert Riebisch  wrote:   
   >>> No. You didn't tell us exactly, what you need. So IP might be enough.   
   >>   
   >> For what ? It looks like a graduation project, was never supported, and   
   >> is 7   
   >   
   > You don't know Jordan Russell?   
      
   I do. I don't know his pascal compiler.   
      
   Actually I tried to port his toolbar97 last weekend because it is used in   
   the bloodshed dev-pascal IDE. It stalled on MDI support.   
      
   >> years discontinued. You singled this one single compiler, so apparantly you   
   >   
   > Last TP release is from 1993. So what? It's still used widely.   
      
   You are comparing a production compiler with 7 major iterations, and one of   
   the most succesful compilers of all time to this thing which even the author   
   itself calls experimental (in italics for extra emphasis even) ?   
      
   Moreover the "wide" use is relative. As far as I can see, a few people still   
   do a bit of scripting with it which can be done with pretty much every   
   development system. Not that that is a bad thing, why bother learning   
   something new if you don't have to, but it is not a compelling reason to   
   advise sb TP.   
      
   For the rest, a few people maintain their old dos apps in it. Not much new   
   there either.   
      
   Probably this will remain this way till MS really breaks DOS support the   
   hard way. (e.g. if 64-bit Windows really catches on, killing 16-bit support)   
      
   >> see something in it. (while to be honest, I also initially thought it was a   
   >> joke, the contrast of something nonfunction with the big ones, which you   
   >   
   > Why do you think, IP doesn't work? Did you try it?   
      
   Till now you haven't really made a point yet to even bother to try.   
      
   >> humourously called bloated)   
   >   
   > Free Pascal or Delphi *are* bloated compared to Turbo Pascal for DOS!   
      
   And TP is bloated to assembler. So what? You are still using TP aren't you?   
      
   I've 16 byte assembler .com's that do something, and TP minimal size is   
   larger than 1000 bytes even!!!   
      
   > Delphi 7 Personal "only" takes ~90 MiB on my PC. For what? I only need a   
   > tenth part of its features.   
      
   (If that worries you, you obviously haven't tried a BDS version then :-)   
      
   Still, I'd never use TP nowadays to save a couple tens of megs out of HD   
   systems that count space in hundreds of GBs, with the TB barrier coming into   
   plain sight.   
      
   Why? Three major reasons:   
      
   - limit string lengths. (yes you can emulate with pchar, but if I would   
     consider that adequate stringsupport, I would use C)   
   - 16-bit limits on structures.   
   - API problems (LFN being one of them)   
      
   The change to console apps in Delphi isn't that big if you don't touch the   
   hardware much, and the 90MB (equivalent to 90MB/500GB*Eur100 =0.18   
   eurocents) I can live with.   
      
   If you a hardware controlling touching ports and interrupts everywhere,   
   things might be different of course.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)