[concrete]

'mol' wrote:

Dick

As I said before: in my opinion it's simply a waste of precious resources that should better be invested in the ongoing development of the Delphi/Windows version. There are most likely so many hidden roadblocks that at some point in time, the project will simply be abandoned. Remember Kylix?

-Uwe

AlphaSkins is an old and mature product. It's very usable and stable. It does NOT require continuous 24-hours-per-day development, and it definitely wouldn't hurt the product if a portion of development time was devoted to making an FPC-compatible port.

I agree with others that a version for Free Pascal is very much needed.

I'm not a paying customer (yet), but if there was a version that would compile for Delphi AND Linux, I would definitely pay for it immediately.

By the way, for those who are familiar with Lazarus, I would strongly encourage you to try CodeTyphon. I discovered it about 3-4 months ago when I was suddenly required to develop a program for Linux on an ARM7 processor. I hated Lazarus…but I love CodeTyphon. It's basically Lazarus on steroids. Download a copy from the developer's web site (pilotlogic.com)

And I'm also willing to do beta testing with AlphaSkins on CodeTyphon to help get a cross-platform version developed faster.

[mol]

'concrete' wrote:

It does NOT require continuous 24-hours-per-day development

How do you know that the only source of income for Serge is AC? He probably has a daytime job as well and does programming on the side. And even if it's his fulltime job – nobody spends 24/7 on the development of a product. There's a life out there as well…

'concrete' wrote:

AlphaSkins is an old and mature product. It's very usable and stable.

Very true, but then comes Windows 10 along and your once stable version enters unknown territory again. I recently switched a few of my machines to Win 10 and believe me, it's no fun. Hardware not working, tablet mode buggy as hell, system dialogs different, and a ton of other issues – and then there is AC which has to master many of these annoying shortcomings. To cut a long story short: Serge has a lot of work simply keeping up with the development of the OS and hunting bugs, and then we haven't even talked about introducing new components into AC, supporting other 3rd party stuff, or enhance functionailty in general.

-Uwe

[HeDiBo]

'mol' wrote:

…but then comes Windows 10 along and your once stable version enters unknown territory again.

It would be interesting to know which problems have emerged in AC specifically related to the Windows 10 release. Can you give us some examples?

[mol]

Hi Dick,

The problems are mainly with Win 10 at the moment, but there is a very good chance that AC will be impacted as well. Try this one for a start:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-start/bugs-when-working-in-tablet-mode/a967f27a-90a7-489e-a71d-271aaf3e56ba

Set the main form's BorderStyle to bsNone and/or the WindowsState to wsMaximized (you shouldn't do the latter, of course), and you will get the same results I've described in the link above. Leave the “Play animations in Windows” enabled in Win 10, and you will experience an extremely slow painting of TFrame's for example when they are created (and skinned) in the FormCreate event and automatically resized afterwards. Maximizing the form in the OnShow event by using ShowWindowAsync(Handle, SW_MAXIMIZE); doesn't help you as long as animations are enabled in Win 10. There's a visible flicker and flashing of the screen, and since AC is heavily involved during the paint process the negative effect is actually getting worse.

The list goes on, but much of it is hardware and/or driver related.

Hope this helps

-Uwe

[HeDiBo]

Hi Uwe,

The problems you describe are solely attributable to flaws in Windows 10 Tablet mode. I think Microsoft should deal with those, not AC.

[mol]

Dick, I never claimed that AC is the one which is responsible, but since I've seen what a mess Win 10 is at the moment and knowing Microsoft, I'm sure that Serge will have to work around certain “features” (like the flawed animation thing) and bugs of Windows for many months to come. My point simply was that AC will never be a finished product as long as the operating system is evolving, and Serge will therefore be fully occupied with the Windows version of AC in the future.

-Uwe

[concrete]

'mol' wrote:

Dick, I never claimed that AC is the one which is responsible, but since I've seen what a mess Win 10 is at the moment and knowing Microsoft, I'm sure that Serge will have to work around certain “features” (like the flawed animation thing) and bugs of Windows for many months to come. My point simply was that AC will never be a finished product as long as the operating system is evolving, and Serge will therefore be fully occupied with the Windows version of AC in the future.

-Uwe

If there's a problem – a known problem – with Windows 10, why should Serge have to waste his time fixing something that really needs to be fixed by Microsoft?

I've developed plenty of software over the years, and in the rare case when I came across a situation where something in my program was not behaving as it should, and the fault was with Windows, I simply told the customer “this problem is with Windows, and you'll have to wait for them to issue a fix”. Especially when the “workaround” for me would take up a considerable amount of my time. Any sane person would understand that.

Let's say he spends two weeks of his time working around Microsoft's bugs…and then next month Microsoft fixes the problem. So now what? Should he spend another two weeks undoing the fix? Because there's no guarantee that when Microsoft fixes their code, that Serge's workaround will still work.

People who jump on the new operating system bandwagon should know – and expect – that they will run into a whole slew of problems. And if they choose to be early adopters, that's their problem. Why should Serge have to work around Microsoft's bugs just for a small number of people who haven't learned a valuable lesson that you NEVER move to a new operating system until at least 6-12 months after release so that all the bugs and incompatibilities can be addressed?

[mol]

'concrete' wrote:

…just for a small number of people who haven't learned a valuable lesson that you NEVER move to a new operating system until at least 6-12 months after release so that all the bugs and incompatibilities can be addressed?

Looks good on paper, doesn't it? Real life software business is different, though. You have to support Win 10 early on to stay ahead of the competition. Simple as that.

-Uwe

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