Photo above shows Virtual Pascal 2.1 files inside DiskJockey 2000 file manager. Note: don't try unpack the RAR files after vp21.zip extraction; the Install program will do this unrar for you.

 Virtual Pascal v2.1 for OS/2 and Windows is now freeware. Virtual Pascal is the preferred IDE for OS/2 developers. Virtual Pascal v2.1 Build 231, the latest release, is a Cross-platform Pascal development tool for Win32, OS/2 and Linux. This fine piece of software includes full-featured text mode IDE, with built-in compiler, linker and debugger. (RTL source and full docs included). You can download it (vp21.zip, 10.6MB)
at:
  http://www.vpascal.com

Photo above shows Virtual Pascal 2.1 Install Wizard inside Win 2000 Console

Technical Information

 Virtual Pascal v2.1 Beta Build 229
  Paris, September 2000
  (C) Copyright 2000 vpascal.com

What's new in Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and utilities

 * When debugging a GUI application using the Windows IDE, a  warning message
   was displayed. This message applies only to the OS/2 text mode IDE and has
   been removed. (Bugfix/101)

 * The Tph2Vph utility, which converts Turbo Pascal help files (*.TPH) to
   compressed Virtual Pascal Help files (*.VPH) hung in Windows 95/98.
   (Bugfix/102)

 * The Tph2Vph utility now has the ability to add "[Name]" to the end of index
   entries. This is useful because some index entries are defined multiple
   times after converting and using some help files. (Feature/103)

 * The IDE could not open directories with a "hidden" attribute. (Bugfix/106)

 * In Windows, filenames with national language characters were not displayed
   properly in the IDE. Proper use of OemToAnsi and AnsiToOem API calls have
   been introduced in the relevant VpSysLow functions, and the IDE now handles
   these files correctly. (Bugfix/107)

 * The debugger has been changed to not display an error message if the debug
   DLL returns  an error code of 9999 if the debugging platform (say, DPMI) is
   not supported by the debugger DLL used. (Feature/108)

 * The IDE did not display directory names beginning with a dot, such as
   ".pascal". (Bugfix/109)

 * When using Save As to save to a new filename, and that filename already
   exists, a warning message is now displayed. (Feature/112)

 * When pressing Ctrl-Enter to open the source file under the cursor, the IDE
   was not able to find some files because it concatenated the Unit Path and
   the Include Path to a maximum length of 255 characters.  (Bugfix/113)

 * The Window List dialog has been made larger to better accomodate long path
   and file names. (Improvement/115)

 * The debugger now highlights Watch items that change during exection, such as
   single step. (Feature/116)

 * The IDE syntax highlights nested {} comments correctly, up to a level of
   32 nested comments. (Feature/605)

 * The default extension for Pascal source files has been changed from .PAS to
   .pas. (Improvement)

 * The IDE now preserves the case of source files, by utilising the new
   VpSysLow.SysFileAsOS function.  (Improvement)

 * The IDE now is aware of read/only attributes.  When trying to save a file
   with a read/only attribute, the IDE prompts whether the read/only file should
   be overwritten anyway. (Improvement/117)

 * The IDE now shows an "r" in the status line when a file has a read/only
   attribute.  It does not prevent the file from being edited, however.
   (Improvement/117)

 * When copying and pasting to and from the VP clipboard in Win32, national
   language characters were not preserved. The IDE now performs OemToAnsi
   conversion for clipboard content. (Bugfix/120)

 * In the Dump window of the OS/2 IDE, Dump to file didn't work. (Bugfix/121)

 * When the last action in the IDE was a Paste operation, and the program was
   then single-stepped in a debug session, pressing F8 to step could cause the
   block to expand unexpectedly.  (Bugfix/122)

 * The command line compiler is included as an experimental Linux executable.
   The compiler does not include a native ELF linker; programs must be compiled
   with Windows as the target platform, and the PE2ELF utility run to convert the
   executables to native ELF format.

   Please refer to other documentation for Linux-specific instructions.

 Installation

To install this version of Virtual Pascal 2.1

i.      Extract all archives you have downloaded to a temporary directory, not the one in which Virtual Pascal is to be installed. (Do not extract the inner archives called W*.RAR, O*.Rar, L*.Rar, and A*.Rar; the installation program will do this for you).

ii.     Run the appropriate installation program, SetupW32.Exe for Windows or SetupOs2.Exe for OS/2. This program is a text mode Turbo Vision application compiled from the same source code for OS/2 and Win32 (of course using Virtual Pascal).

iii.    The licence agreement is displayed. Read it and press Alt-I or select the Install option from the File menu to start the installation.

iv.     The first page of the installation wizard is displayed.
Press the Next button to proceed.

v.      On the next page, the pre-selection screen, choose from one of 3 default options. Select Full Install to install all parts of the product, Typical Install to install all components for the current platform only, and Custom to pick and choose.
Press the Next button to continue.

vi.     Based on your choice on the pre-selection screen, some or all components of the installation will be selected for installation. Review the settings, by using the Detail button to review the inclusion of sub-components.
Press the Next button to continue.

vii.    Select the drive to which Virtual Pascal 2.1 should be installed; if a drive does not have enough space to install the selected options, the drive space indicator will be red. If installing to such a drive, you can insist that there is enough space and continue anyway. The directory will be chosen on the next screen.
Press the Next button to continue.

viii.   Choose your preference regarding the case of directory names. You can choose UPPER case, lower case or Mixed Case. All directories created by the installation program will use the choice selected here.
Press the Next button to continue.

ix.     Enter the installation directory, excluding drive letter. This can be any directory (spaces not allowed), whether it exists or not. If it is a new directory, the installation program will ask if it should be created for you.
Press the Next button to continue.

x.      If any of the components requiring original source code were included in the selection (Object Windows Library, Visual Class Library, OPro) you will be prompted to enter the path to the original sources.
Press the Next button to continue.

If any of the required source files are not found, an error message will be displayed and you will be prompted to enter a new path.

While you wait

The installation program will now unpack the selected archives and copy (and patch, where required) the selected source code.

When it has finished, please read the rest of this readme file. Or, since OS/2 and Win32 are multitasking systems you can just read it while the installation program is running.

The OS/2 programs are installed to the bin.os2 directory, the Win32 programs to bin.w32 and the files used for the experimental Linux support to bin.lnx.

Full information about Virtual Pascal, the directory structure, etc. is included as .PDF manuals readable by the free Adobe Acrobat viewer v3.0 or later. These files can be found in the DOC directory.

Upgrade Patches

The upgrade patches for non-VP source code included with this software is version specific. This means that the update program requires an original, unmodified source file in order to be able to perform the update.

The following versions can be upgraded to compatibility with Virtual Pascal:

•       Visual Component Library (Requires Borland Delphi)

•       Delphi v1.00
•       Delphi v2.00-v2.01
•       Delphi v3.00
•       Delphi v4.01
•       Delphi v5.00

Object Pro (Requires TurboPower Object Professional)

•       v1.30

Object Windows Library (Requires Borland Delphi or Pascal)

•       v7.00 (BP v7.0 or BP for Windows)
•       v8.00 (Delphi v1.00)
•       v8.01 (Delphi v1.01)

Known Issues

This release of Virtual Pascal v2.1 has the following known issues that you may need to consider: •       Cut/Paste between the VP IDE and other applications may have a problem in Windows 98.
•       The text-only version of the User's Guide, vp21user.txt, is not included. (Word simply refuses to produce it; I'm investigating).
•       Keyboard handling in Win32 for both your own programs and for the VP IDE is handled by routines in VpSysLow/VpSysW32.Pas. On some keyboard layouts, these routines cause problems, and the VpKbdW32.Dll library can be used to dynamically substitute the statically linked keyboard handlers. Please refer to the source code and documentation for more information on this.
•       In several units of the Run-Time Library, definitions are enclosed in {$IFDEF DPMI32} .. {$ENDIF} blocks. However, this release of Virtual Pascal does not support 32-bit DOS as a target without additional support files, and this code is included in order to ease the implementation of 32-bit DOS target code. For an example of such a library, please refer to Veit Kannegieser's site.
•       In several units of the Run-Time Library, definitions are enclosed in {$IFDEF LINUX} .. {$ENDIF} blocks. Support for the Linux platform is very experimental at this stage though, and you should not expect it to work very well, if at all. A group of VP users has initiated a project to port VP to Linux, and can be found at www.trantor.de/joerg.pleumann/. The Virtual Pascal team is working with this group of users to finalise Linux support in Virtual Pascal.

•       The built-in linker throws an error message if two resources with the same resource ID are included in your program. This prevents resource conflicts and minimises the size of the executable. In OS/2, the Resource Editor creates a resource with ID 1 for every dialog; to link these resources, manually edit these to have different IDs.

•       To better facilitate Linux integration (which requires that the executables compiled by VP are converted to ELF format), an option to execute a user-defined program after linking has been added. Please refer to the User's Guide for details.

What is new

This release of Virtual Pascal implements a long list of features requested by Virtual Pascal users worlwide, and corrects several problems reported in v2.0 and previous beta releases of the product.

Much of the work has gone into making Virtual Pascal compatible with the Linux operating system; for a complete list of changes, please refer to the WhatsNew.Txt file in the doc\ directory.

Copy protection

This Beta version of Virtual Pascal v2.1 is (C) Copyright 2000 vpascal.com. Please refer to the licence agreement in Licence.txt for details.

As opposed to previous versions of Virtual Pascal, no built-in copy protection system is active in this beta version and the original distribution archive can be copied and distributed in unmodified form.

Feedback

We want and welcome your feedback! If you have suggestions or want to report a bug, please refer to the Feedback.txt file in the doc\ directory. It contains a list of the data we require to handle the feedback most efficiently.

If at all possible, please submit feedback to feedback@vpascal.com.

Manuals

Comprehensive manuals covering the use of Virtual Pascal v2.1 and a complete language reference are included as Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files in the DOC directory.

The User's guide, vp21user.pdf, introduces the installation program, features of VP v2, IDE usage, debugger, and cross-platform support.

The Language Reference, vp21lang.pdf, provides in- depth documentation of the Pascal language as implemented by Virtual Pascal.

Both documents can be viewed using the widely available free Adobe Acrobat Reader v3.0 or later, and can be printed to provide a hard copy manual. Download Acrobat Reader from Adobe's web site.

The manuals are secured from changing, although users of Adobe Exchange can add notes to the documents.

The User Manual is also included in plain text format, as vp21user.txt for easier viewing and searching on less powerful machines.

Contact Address

Feedback should be directed to one of the following addresses:

Support issues  support@vpascal.com
Bug reports     feedback@vpascal.com
Other issues    vpascal@vpascal.com
News    http://www.vpascal.com

Trademarks

Company names, brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Copyright © 1999-2000 Allan Mertner
E-Mail vpascal@vpascal.com      Virtual Pascal v2.1 Read Me
Updated 6 September 2000

@Macarlo, Inc.
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