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Getting Started with Lazarus IDE
Getting Started with Lazarus IDE

Getting Started with Lazarus IDE: Get to grips with the basics of programming, debugging, creating, and documenting projects with the Lazarus IDE

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Profile Icon Roderick Person
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Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2.9 (17 Ratings)
Paperback Feb 2013 116 pages 1st Edition
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Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Roderick Person
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$19.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2.9 (17 Ratings)
Paperback Feb 2013 116 pages 1st Edition
eBook
$9.99 $16.99
Paperback
$26.99
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Free Trial
Renews at $19.99p/m
eBook
$9.99 $16.99
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Getting Started with Lazarus IDE

Chapter 2. Getting to Know the Lazarus IDE – a Quick Tour

In this chapter we are going to examine the Lazarus interface. We will cover the following topics:

  • Learn about the different parts of the default interface layout, such as:

    • The Source Editor window

    • The Object Inspector window

    • The Component Tree window

  • Learn about Main Menu

  • Learn about LCL Palette

For a Delphi programmer, the Lazarus IDE should look quite familiar. The default layout of Lazarus is extremely similar to Delphi's default layout, as you can see in the following screenshot. LCL Component Palette is located on the topmost window, along with the main menu and quick access icons. To the left is the Object Inspector window. The Object Inspector window also contains the Component Tree window, which displays a tree view of all the components used on the current active form of the project, by default Form1. Next to the Object Inspector window is the Source Editor window, which contains a tab for each individual source code file of...

The Object Inspector window


The first tab of the Object Inspector window is the Properties tab. The Properties tab contains the published properties of the graphical component elements contained in a form, such as Name, Position, and Visible. Clicking on a component on the form or selecting it in the Component Tree window makes its properties accessible in the Properties tab. Right-clicking on the Properties tab displays a pop-up menu with the Show Hints, Show Components Tree, and Options entries.

When the developer places his mouse cursor over the property of the active component, such as Align, having Show Hints enabled will display a pop-up message with help concerning that property. The Options entry opens the IDE Options dialog, displaying the Environment options tree with the Object Inspector branch selected. Primarily, these options are just for setting the look of the Object Inspector branch with options for setting colors or showing or not showing certain elements of the Object Inspector...

The Component Tree window


The Component Tree window is located in the top window of the Object Tree dialog and can be made visible or hidden by checking or unchecking the Show Component Tree entry on any of the pop-up menus that are accessed by right-clicking on the Object Inspector dialog. The components of the application are shown in a parent-child relationship on a tree diagram. Right-clicking on the window gives you access to a pop-up menu that allows you to copy, cut, paste, and delete the selected component. Copying will create a new component when pasted. You can cut and paste a component into and out of different container type components such as TPanel. There is also a menu entry titled Z-order that allows you to adjust what layer of the form the component is anchored to. This is only effective for container components, such as TPanel.

The Source Editor window


The Source Editor window contains a tab for each opened unit's source code. The Source Editor features include code highlighting, code completion, and refactoring. The Source Editor options can be accessed by right-clicking on the window and selecting the Options entry in the pop-up menu. Options such as code folding, code color highlighting, and the delay of displaying the code hints and completion boxes are displayed. The pop-up menu also contains entries to change file settings, such as displaying the code line numbers, and code highlighting colors, and debug settings, such as toggling of breakpoints, evaluation, and modification of expressions. We will cover many of these options in more detail in Chapter 3, Creating a Hello World Program.

Main menu, quick icons, and the LCL Palette window

The main menu, quick icons, and the LCL Palette window are at the top-most part of the Lazarus IDE window. Quick icons is the Lazarus terminology for the icons located to the...

Summary


In this chapter we learned about the different parts of Lazarus. The Main Menu area located in the top-most window, by default, contains various submenus, such as the Run menu, which contains entries for compiling, running, and debugging an application, and the Project menu, from which new projects can be created. Options such as the application title and icon can be set using the Projects Options entry.

The Source Editor window includes features such as code highlighting, code completion, refactoring, and code folding.

The Object Inspector window allows access to the published properties and events of a graphical component that has been added to a form.

The Component Tree window, which is located in the top window of the Object Inspector window, shows the components of a form in a parent-child relationship. Components can be added or edited using Component Tree.

Finally, we learned about the LCL Palette, which has multiple tabs, such as SQLdb, Common Controls, and Misc, that contain...

Left arrow icon Right arrow icon

Key benefits

  • Creating new projects
  • Create components for use in Lazarus
  • Documenting Lazarus project

Description

A good integrated development environment can be the key to creating and delivering software on time and budget. Having a programming language and a development environment that runs on multiple platforms greatly eases and lessens the time taken on creating cross-platform applications. An IDE that is compatible with a legacy code base allows developers to leverage existing libraries in future applications."Getting Started with Lazarus" is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of clear step-by-step exercises, which will help you take advantage of the power of the Lazarus IDE and Free Pascal to develop software that can be created for cross-platform use."Getting started with Lazarus" discusses developing software with the open source cross platform integrated development environment and the Free Pascal language. We'll learn how to install Lazarus on various platforms such as Linux and Windows, as well as how to create new projects and convert existing Delphi projects to Lazarus projects by learning the differences between Delphi's Pascal syntax and Free Pascal's Object Pascal using a real world example project. We'll learn how to create custom components for use in Lazarus. We'll also learn the basics of documenting a Lazarus project using the Lazarus Documentation Editor. Finally we will learn that the IDE can be rebuilt using a different widget type, specifically GTK 2. Teach yourself the basics of programming with Lazarus and the open source IDE for the Free Pascal language.

Who is this book for?

This book is geared toward developers that have a familiarity with Delphi or Free Pascal and would like to start using the open source Lazarus Integrated Development Environment. You should have knowledge of creating a console and GUI applications as well as creating basic components. Example source code and projects are provided to help learn the differences between Delphi and Lazarus projects.

What you will learn

  • Install Lazarus on different platforms such as Linux or Windows
  • Learn the basics of the Lazarus IDE such as the menus, the Object Inspector, and the Source Code Editor
  • Create new projects with Lazarus such as console applications and GUI applications
  • Debug Lazarus projects
  • Convert an existing Delphi project to a Lazarus project
  • Create new components for use with Lazarus GUI applications
  • Document a Lazarus project using the LazDE tool
  • Rebuild Lazarus on the Windows platform using the GTK 2 widget set
  •  

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Feb 22, 2013
Length: 116 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781782163404
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Embarcadero Technologies
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Product Details

Publication date : Feb 22, 2013
Length: 116 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781782163404
Vendor :
Embarcadero Technologies
Category :
Languages :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

7 Chapters
Installing and Configuring the Lazarus Development Environment Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Getting to Know the Lazarus IDE – a Quick Tour Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Creating a Hello World Program Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Converting Delphi Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Creating a Lazarus Component Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
The Lazarus Documentation Editor Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Rebuilding Lazarus with a GTK2 Interface Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2.9
(17 Ratings)
5 star 11.8%
4 star 23.5%
3 star 35.3%
2 star 5.9%
1 star 23.5%
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Dave Apr 18, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Thank You
Amazon Verified review Amazon
buchi Feb 23, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
DelphiソフトをLazarusに変換する方法や、コンポーネントの作成方法など一般的なGUIソフト作成手順の解説を超えた実践的な記述が読める貴重な本。
Amazon Verified review Amazon
James B. Jun 01, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Generally, it was a pretty good introduction to Lazarus and object pascal. The author, Person, didn't say much about the problems that you might encounter with the Mac or Linux, but he did say that Windows was his primary OS. This book will get the reader headed in right direction.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Barry Finch Mar 15, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Just bought this for 6p, plus £3.50 postage from the USA. Yes 6p! It was secondhand, but you wouldn't know it to look at it.I only unwrapped it five minutes ago so this is a first impression review. It's a fairly short book that runs to 101 pages including five pages of index.The Menkaura Abiola-Ellison book 'Getting Started with Lazarus and Free Pascal' runs to 371 pages with only three and a bit pages of index and the James Powell book 'A Beginner's guide to Programming with the Lazarus IDE' has 58 pages and no index.A quick check (small sample size admittedly) on this book's index confirmed that the index did in fact direct me to the correct page, unlike Mr Abiola-Ellison's book which seems to have used a random number generator for creating its index. There were some things that didn't appear in the index, but better that than having grossly wrong entries.One thing I spotted almost immediately was a section covering how to convert your old Delphi programs to run under Lazarus. It was worth the 6p plus postage (many times over) for that alone. It covers Lazarus's built in tools for doing the conversion and also goes into some detail on how to do it by hand.My first impression was going to be five stars. However I couldn't find any reference to variables so I've knocked it down to four stars. I may well update my review once I've had time for deeper analysis.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
PDHCentral Nov 04, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Expected a bit more... Good for beginners but its content is a little bare, focusing more on setting up your environment rather than the programming language itself.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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