[gopher] end of OverbiteFF

[Kevin Veroneau]

I recently started work on a cross-platform Gopher client in Lazarus(essentially free Delphi).  It has progressed quite well.  I ran into a very weird issue recently which led to slower development as a result.

The best thing about FreePascal/Lazarus is that it's fully cross-platform, and their GUI toolkit has a native look to it regardless which platform it's running on.  I recently purchased a used MacBook so that I can get XCode and cross-compile it.

If anybody here has Pascal or Delphi development experience, do let me know.  I plan on publishing it online soon under the infamous GPL license.  Lazarus has support to display HTML and CSS for gopherspaces which do use that technology.  The best part is that a Lazarus app doesn't need any external libraries to work, as it outputs static binaries.  The latest Lazarus is also capable at exporting both Android and iOS apps, making it the ultimate cross-platform language that compiles to native machine code.  For extreme compatibility, it can even build binaries for some rather obsecure OSes like PalmOS, BeOS, AROS, AmigaOS(68k), Classic MacOS, 16-bit and 32-bit DOS, Nintendo DS. Gameboy Advanced(No Network tho), SymbianOS, Windows CE, Nintendo Wii, Netware, and OS/2.

Of course not all of these OSes can use a full GUI, but at least the Gopher protocol specific code can be reused between platforms we do choose to support.  However, all current modern OSes can use the exact same GUI code, such as Linux, OS X, and Win32/64.

Yes, I am trying to advocate FreePascal/Lazurus here, as I personally believe it is the best tool for this.  I'm personally more fond of Python, but I realize that Python cannot be used for absolutely everything.  As much as my basis instincts tell me to hate everything but Python, it is not completely cross-platform and any program made in it requires the full Python runtime environment to be present.

I will publish the code I have so far for this Gopher client in the coming days along with a couple screenshot of it running on Linux/OSX/Win7/Win10. 


  Original Message  
From:nunojsilva at ist.utl.pt
Sent:August 23, 2016 4:43 PM
To:gopher-project at lists.alioth.debian.org
Reply-to:gopher-project at lists.alioth.debian.org
Subject:Re: [gopher] end of OverbiteFF

On 2016-08-22 14:56, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
> > [...] 
> > > At that point we'll need a cross-platform client, something that doesn't
> > > require any dependencies other than what it includes with it, that people
> > > run preferably on Windows and Mac and build on Linux or *BSD. I'm going to
> > > think about how to do that.
> > 
> > Would Mosaic be a good candidate for this? 
> 
> Maybe, but I'd need to do two non-trivial things:
> 
> - Get the Windows build system working
> - Convert the toolkit to something non-X on Mac (it's fine as it is on Linux)
> 
> I'm considering something SDL-based since I can build SDL apps for Windows
> on Mac using MXE (as well as OS X, including PowerPC), but this would
> obviously be less flexible or "native."

Could something like this be done in Mosaic-ck, or do you prefer to keep
that as close to the original Mosaic as possible?

-- 
Nuno Silva

_______________________________________________
Gopher-Project mailing list
Gopher-Project at lists.alioth.debian.org
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gopher-project