Standard Compatibility [was: Re: New Alpha]_(re)

Thu, 03 Apr 97 19:42:57 -0500

On Thu, 03 Apr 1997 18:52:18 +0200, Sven Engelhardt wrote:

>gpc really shall default to borland/turbo-pascal behaviour. You could
>implement reading ~/.gpcrc to change that. (For ease this could be done
>with a shell script) The cause ain't 'standard' performance, as
>thousands
>of dos-pascal-programs will be ported to linux. 

I have to admit I'm in favor of defaulting to ISO standard behavior, but
that is just my personal preference.  I'm mainly concerned with the last
comment... is it true that 'thousands of dos-pascal-programs' will be
ported to linux'?  I don't see a majority of the DOS-based TP programs
being all that useful, or all that many TP programmers perceiving a need to
port their software to gpc.   Granted there was a lot of good software
written with TP and which should be ported, but I think your numbers are
over stated.  

The comment also begs the question. is gpc's role to provide a facility for
porting 10 year old DOS programs or for the creation of new programs?  I
would think primarily the latter and that decisions on gpc's defaults
should serve that end.  

-Kevin

--
Kevin A. Foss   ---   kfoss@mint.net
--

Kevin A. Foss (kfoss@mint.net)