From:Karl Thompson, CIS:72366,306


Hi-

I know that there has been some discussion on this forum about the future of
Borland Pascal. Well here is the latest of based upon what we learned attending
the Borland Conference in Orlando this week. (ended 6/8) Also, there was a
front page story about the product in PC Week this week.

Now, I must tell you that at no time did Borland call this product Borland
Pascal. The product is being referred to as Delphi95. Also, these are my random
thoughts and these comments are not to be construed as being complete or
completely accurate! (Remember, we were shown beta product and things could
certainly change.)

First, I sat through one very short demo of the program and one 45minute demo.
At no time did the program crash. So while Borland would not announce a
shipping date (or price for that matter) it looks as if it is nearly ready to
ship. (There was unofficial speculation for a source inside BI that it would
ship in Sept. or so. Just like the model '95 cars. Get It?)

C++ and BP will use the same underlying compiler. It compiles 120,000 lines a
minute.

This is the first product that Borland is calling a 'two way tool'. That is the
programmer can develop an application visually, and Delpi95 will generate a
text file of Object Pascal code. The coder, to write a windows application will
not have to understand pointers.

Delpi95 will ship with objects such as spreadsheets and table frames. The coder
can easily attach to a Paradox or dBase table or a SQL table!! (PC Week said
that the SQL attachment will be in a later version, although we were not told
that.)

If you are familiar with the way that PDOXWIN works, Delphi95 will seem at
least some what familiar. The coder will (can, nothing is required) pick
objects from a scrolling list and then modify a property.

A 'Hello World' type program will generate a EXE file of just over 100k. I
don't know whether this is good or bad. I guess the real test will come when we
can see how much more we can add to an application and see if the size changes
by much. At least there isn't a 1mb or so RTL being linked in.

The product DOES not have OWL as we know it, but rather it comes with the  next
version of OWL. (I forget just what they called it VOL for 'visual object
library' maybe?)

Yes it will compile 16 or 32 bit applications. Yes it is a 'Chicago' compatible
compiler. OS/2? Sorry. It looks like we might have to wait for that one.

All in all, very impressive. In fact, I just bought Borland stock. (I'm self
employed and I just allocated nearly 20% of my retirement money to a BORL
purchase.)

BTW, they showed some other great technology. If thinks go well for them,
Borland will be shipping 14 new or updated products between now and 3/31/95.

Karl


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 * Origin: House of Glass (2:500/137.2193)