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  • PascalGUI; Write Pascal programs on Android!

    by
    WILL
    Published on 08-05-2011 04:48 PM
    8 Comments Comments
    Well it's been a while since anyone has tried to create a development environment for Pascal that runs on a mobile device. It seems however that the author of PascalGUI has succeeded in doing just that. Now you can write and run your own Pascal and Object Pascal programs on your Android device. Current version is 1.2.1.

    It uses Free Pascal as the compiler which makes it full-featured and goes for $1.50 on the Android Market.

    Also PascalGUI includes the Android Terminal Emulator so you can to run your application as well as you would if you were running it on a Linux PC.

    Tested devices:

    • Android Emulator 1.6, QVGA
    • Android Emulator 2.2, WVGA
    • Acer Liquid 2.2, WVGA
    • Samsung Galaxy S 2.2, WVGA
    • HTC Desire HD


    Minimum Requirements are:

    • Android 1.6 and up
    • 6.9MB Download (Installs to 100 - 500)
    • An SD card


    WARNINGS:

    • All Telechips-CPU based devices are unsupported (Android tablets from China), because of the incompatibility with EABI 5.
    • PascalGUI will check license via the Internet.
    • First launch may be long due to library unpacking.


    If you have an Android Device you can get it at the Android Market at market.android.com.



    Screenshots of PascalGUI
    1. Categories:
    2. Developer Tools
    Comments 8 Comments
    1. paul_nicholls's Avatar
      paul_nicholls - 08-05-2011, 10:20 PM
      LOL! you beat me to it Jason, I was thinking I should have made this a news post

      cheers,
      Paul
    1. chronozphere's Avatar
      chronozphere - 08-05-2011, 10:29 PM
      The cool part here is obviously that FPC and Pascal based software does work on android.

      However, I very much doubt how usefull this app is in reality. First of all, mobile devices are not development machines, so an development environment on android doesn't make much sense to me. Secondly, it's not clear what kind of capabilities it has in terms of creating user-interfaces and supporting more complex interactions than simple command-line programs do.

      If I were to develop software for android, I'd rather see a Pascal toolkit that could be used in a Windows/Linux environment so you can have all your tools around (Like a debugger, versioning system etc).

      Nevertheless, this is a good proof of concept that Pascal Development for android will be possible.
    1. paul_nicholls's Avatar
      paul_nicholls - 09-05-2011, 03:17 AM
      Quote Originally Posted by chronozphere View Post
      The cool part here is obviously that FPC and Pascal based software does work on android.

      However, I very much doubt how usefull this app is in reality. First of all, mobile devices are not development machines, so an development environment on android doesn't make much sense to me. Secondly, it's not clear what kind of capabilities it has in terms of creating user-interfaces and supporting more complex interactions than simple command-line programs do.

      If I were to develop software for android, I'd rather see a Pascal toolkit that could be used in a Windows/Linux environment so you can have all your tools around (Like a debugger, versioning system etc).

      Nevertheless, this is a good proof of concept that Pascal Development for android will be possible.
      All good points Nathan, usually I WOULD want to do development on my main computer and not on the android device

      Still...the coolness factor is pretty neat

      cheers,
      Paul
    1. WILL's Avatar
      WILL - 09-05-2011, 03:50 AM
      I dunno. I think that with the right Android device this could still be useful IF the right functionality is put into the GUI portion of the app.

      For example, you'll need a keyboard right? Well every device has a digital multi-touch keyboard built-in right? (I know the iPad does) Now that might block some of your screen so that's kind of an issue so... why not a docking station that has a built-in keyboard? I know the iPad has one from Apple, but does any of the Android tablets have such a docking station/bluetooth keyboard attachment?
    1. paul_nicholls's Avatar
      paul_nicholls - 09-05-2011, 04:45 AM
      Apparently I can use a usb mouse + keyboard plugged into my Haipad tablet if I use a USB expansion port plugged in (only 1 device without the usb expansion due to only 1 USB port), so this is pretty neat!

      Someone connected their tablet to the TV (hdmi out), and used the mouse + keyboard to have a 'real computer'

      cheers,
      Paul
    1. chronozphere's Avatar
      chronozphere - 09-05-2011, 06:59 AM
      I dunno. I think that with the right Android device this could still be useful IF the right functionality is put into the GUI portion of the app.
      Exactly! We'd need the functionality any basic IDE has to offer, for it to become really usefull. Also other supporting software like a versioning system is a must-have IMHO.

      For example, you'll need a keyboard right? Well every device has a digital multi-touch keyboard built-in right? (I know the iPad does) Now that might block some of your screen so that's kind of an issue so... why not a docking station that has a built-in keyboard? I know the iPad has one from Apple, but does any of the Android tablets have such a docking station/bluetooth keyboard attachment?
      Hah Yeah the Asus EEE Pad Transformer has a very neat one.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jl931yUedc (I'm still thinking about getting one ^^)

      Well, personally I think the on-screen keyboards are nice for things like writing emails and entering URL's, yet they are not comfortable enough to do programming. Simply by the fact that you can only use two fingers to type.

      I think the most mobile development platform is a netbook (or maybe the transformer ), not a phone or a tablet.
    1. Ingemar's Avatar
      Ingemar - 17-05-2011, 03:14 PM
      This is very interesting, but I can't seem to see any pointer to more information. Is this available for the rest of us to try? Even Google finds nothing.
    1. paul_nicholls's Avatar
      paul_nicholls - 27-05-2011, 03:57 AM
      I contacted the author of the PasGUI and asked him some questions about it's capabilities..

      he said this:

      PascalGUI capabilities are:
      1) Console input/output
      2) File input/output
      3) Freepascal syntax and some modules (crt,sysutils).

      (PascalGUI = GUI+arm-linux freepascal).

      I think that GUI support is not needed for PascalGUI, better to use GUI support on PC using Freepascal crosscompiler.
      There are no plans for doing actual GUI stuff with it apparently...

      cheers,
      Paul