Hello Linux gurus and users,

[link|http://www.vpascal.com/|Virtual Pascal] - a free 32-bit Borland Pascal port with many Delphi extensions - has recently seen a bit of a rebirth on its mailing list. VP runs on Win and OS/2 and a partial Linux port exists. Allan Mertner, VP's head guru, recently posted the following to the mailing list:

Subject: [Vpascal] Linux woes
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2003 21:28:40 -0400
List-Help: <[link|http://topica.com/lists/virtualpascal@topica.com/>|http://topica.com/li...scal@topica.com/>]

Hi guys,

I've been spending some time on the VP Linux IDE and rather than bang my
head against the wall more than necessary I thought I'd ask all you
clever ones...

There are a few problems I'd like to solve:
- When running across telnet/ssh, I cannot find a way of detecting
whether Ctrl/Alt/Shift is pressed when you hit a function key and TAB.
Is it because it's not possible at all? If so, why?? (The code Veit
has written uses an ioctl call with TIOCLINUX as the function and uses
subfunction 6 to retrieve the shift state. It returns EINVLD when not
run locally).

This is really annoying. I can compile, but I can't window-resize
(ctrl-f5) or evaluate (ctrl-f4) or look up help index (ctrl-f1) without
using the menus or the mouse. Help! :)

- Is there a way to ensure that there are some line drawing characters
available? Right now, the IDE uses all 7-bit ASCII (no high-byte chars)
and it's definitely not as good as in Windows/OS2.

- How should saving of preferences (i.e. .vpo files) work? In order to
remain consistent with Windows and OS/2, the IDE currently just uses
.vpo files stored wherever you want - but perhaps it should default to
storing and loading them from the user's home directory to be more
Linux-y? What do you prefer?

Out of interest, who of you are actually interested in the IDE running
in Linux? Note that it's *still* text-mode ;)

Thanks,
Allan

Your thoughts? The IDE is quite nice, being a faithful BP clone. Having it, or a useful simulation, on Linux would be quite handy. I can relay comments back to the mailing list.

Thanks!

Cheers,
Scott.