Date:  Sun, 03 Apr 2005 21:28:25 -0300
From:  madodel at ptdprolog.net
Subject:  [VOICENWS] SW: Virtual Pascal has died


From: seanDESPAM at DESPAMoutpostbbs.net 

Found this on Virtual Pascal's website:

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I am sad to report that Virtual
Pascal has died a quiet death. It was born in 1995, and died in 2005 at
the ripe old age (for software) of 10 years.

What this means to you is that there is unlikely to be more releases of
VP, and that there certainly will be no releases with shiny new features
in them.

The lack of activity in VP development has been apparent for a long time,
and the inevitable conclusion is fairly unsurprising. The reasons for the
inactivity are many, but among the main ones are - VP's compiler codebase
has become obsolete. It's written in assembly code, and adding new
functionality to the compiler realistically requires that it's written in
a higher level language, - I don't have the time or even knowledge to
rewrite large portions of VP (Vitaly wrote the compiler and is generally
much cleverer than me), - Nobody else seems to have the time (or
knowledge) required either, - FreePascal is moving forward and is now
actually quite usable. Yes, it probably has its flaws, but it also has a
lot of people working on it - and VP does not.

So I guess that's it. If you are happy with VP and it works for you,
that's great: please feel free to continue using it. If, on the other hand
it doesn't work, there is a bug, or you really need a new feature, then
you should probably look elsewhere: FreePascal and Delphi are both fine
Pascal compilers that have moved well beyond where VP is ever going to
go...

And before you ask, VP will not be released as Open Source. I don't own
the copyright to all of the code (some of it is related to Borland's
source code) and you have to believe me when I tell you it's so
complicated you would not be able to do much with it even if it was
available. Sorry!

However, I'll keep running vpascal.com for a few more years and even reply
to the occasional forum post or email message.

It was good while it lasted: Thanks for all your support over the years!

(The message was written by Allan Mertner, one of the main VP developers
and vpascal.com webmaster.)

Url:  http://www.vpascal.com

From: Sean Dennis (seanDESPAM at DESPAMoutpostbbs.net)


Submitted with the form on http://www.os2world.com/submit_news.php

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