On 12/23/2013 11:48 PM, Lachlan Gemmell wrote:

> I know you use VCL for the Windows version and CLX for the Linux
> version so to support OSX you were always going to have to write a
> new GUI at the very least. What platform/framework did you end up
> going with?

As Kevin mentioned, we used Free Pascal 2.6 and Lazarus 1.2 with the
Carbon backend.  We expanded our existing VCL/CLX compatibility layer,
so it's still all a single source and a single set of DFMs, with design
work and core development all done in Delphi XE.


BC4 is a good demonstration of what's possible with Lazarus, but it did
take effort to make it feel as native as it does.  We had to add support
for sheets and non-modal color/font dialogs ourselves, for example, and
the toolbar and statusbar are custom themed.  The LCL also copies the
VCL's MainForm concept, where there's only one primary window and the
application terminates when it's closed.  Making it work with 0..n
document windows took a bunch of work.  We've submitted most of our
changes to the Lazarus bug tracker, but all of those enhancements are
implemented in a higher level, so we can't easily contribute them back.


I am really impressed with what they've been able to do with limited
resources though, and it makes me miss a proper VCL for Cocoa that much
more.  Free Pascal's Objective Pascal support is really nice too, and
makes interfacing with and descending from Cocoa classes quite pleasant.


-- 
Craig Peterson
Scooter Software