Delphi Programming

and software in general.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

A Delphi road map preview from the new product manager.

While we wait for a Delphi roadmap, a "roadmap preview" is available from the new RAD Studio product manager.

  • Frequent and regular FireMonkey updates
  • A Next Generation Delphi Compiler with multiple hardware/OS targets
  • Next Generation RAD C++ Compiler with multiple hardware/OS targets
  • 64bit RAD C++
  • Delphi and C++ iOS support
  • Expanded Mobile UI and Device support like Location, Camera, Accelerometers etc
  • Delphi and C++ ARM Support
  • Extended iOS Support
  • Android Support
  • Win8/Metro Support - Intel and ARM
See May the road(map) rise with you for more.

3 comments:

  1. I will be interested to see where things go with Win8 support. It seems that Metro would require pure FireMonkey development. That's a natural solution for light Apps, but I think Metro will stink for heavy hitting business applications. (no overlapping windows - tiles - heavy on touch)

    I'm wondering if there is a way that VCL will ever support direct WinRT. Supposedly Visual Studio will have native C++ compile to WinRT. There's a lot of existing code in the world that works much better in VCL and with traditional Windows handling.

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  2. I think we can say for sure that VCL will not span the WinRT Metro UI. We might be able to access WinRT non-visuals from a VCL App, but WinRT is the native Windows library reinvented - so in a way you can call it a new platform. Can the visual part of WinRT be wrapped in FireMonkey? Don't know. Lots of exploration and hard choices ahead for the Delphi team, me thinks.

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  3. I m think, VCL should never be compatible with WinRT directly - only via legacy desktop part of Windows API.

    Delphi RTL should be compatible with WinRT via new platform - for ex Windows.WinRT.* namespace, like MacOS API)

    Regarding UI layer - don't know, no ideas. Maybe its best to produce some XAML-based bindings to new Win UI components, maybe the can port FireMonkey to Metro-like style.

    And one more note: no text about OpenCL support, but logo is on screen)

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