More project templates

[Dibo]

Hi,

Recently I had to learn environment CodeBlocks to write a program testing a DLL written in Lazarus. Caught my attention an interesting set of project templates. There were templates such as: GTK+ Project, QT Project, Win32 GUI Application, etc. This projects shows how to use native system API. This projects contains only the basic structure of the program as creating the main form with a button "Hello world" and support the message queue (I think, this things take the most time at the beginning and not everyone knows how to get started). These templates do not use LCL, so binary files are very small (<50 kB). I fully support the idea of LCL and crossplatform, but sometimes you need a lightweight and simple program (for example, mobile systems, such WinCE), good alternative in this case is fpGUI. Lazarus has an impressive set of tools and functions to handle the native API so why not use it? I have some projects where I use native UI (GTK, Windows and WinCE) so I can try write patches, but what do you think about this idea?

Regards

[Leledumbo]

These templates do not use LCL, so binary files are very small (<50 kB).

And very platform specific.

I fully support the idea of LCL and crossplatform, but sometimes you need a lightweight and simple program (for example, mobile systems, such WinCE), good alternative in this case is fpGUI

Have you seen KOL-CE? I'm also waiting for LCL fpGUI interface to get stable (standard controls already work fine). Using fpGUI directly is just as easy as using Lazarus (and it has its own designer), but I don't really like the unusual interface (i.e. skin).

Lazarus has an impressive set of tools and functions to handle the native API so why not use it?

LCL itself is a very thin layer on top of underlying GUI toolkits, and it uses native API whenever available (WinAPI for WinXX, Carbon for Mac, etc.).
Nothing stops you from writing native GUI applications without LCL using Lazarus as IDE and Free Pascal as the compiler. But the point of Lazarus existence is to help you writing those apps without dealing much with plaform / toolkit specific issues. And once the software has a chance of being ported to other platforms, believe me, you'll get back to LCL.

I have some projects where I use native UI (GTK, Windows and WinCE) so I can try write patches, but what do you think about this idea?

Lazarus already have projecttemplates package, but unfortunately it is neither shipped with sample templates nor we have a repository of templates. Maybe you can create the latter instead.