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NAME

       fp - Free Pascal Compiler (FPC) integrated development environment

SYNOPSIS

       fp [options] [sourcefile]

DESCRIPTION

       This  binary  is  the  integrated  development  environment of the Free
       Pascal Compiler (FPC) which is an  advanced  Turbo  Pascal  and  Delphi
       (7.0)  compatible  multitarget  Pascal compiler. The compiler engine is
       not based on GCC, but is completely standalone.

       The compiler uses LD(1) and can use AS(1)  (see  parameter  -Aas),  but
       also has its own binary object writer.

       The  current  main  targets  are  Go32V2 (Dos DJGPP extender), Freebsd,
       Linux, MacOS, MacOSX, MorphOS, Netware,  OS/2  and  Win32.   The  other
       targets  (M68K compilers for Atari and Amiga) are either based on older
       versions of the compiler or are still in development.

       This manpage is meant for quick-reference only. FPC comes with a  great
       (2000+  pages) manual, which is updated constantly, while this man page
       can be out of date.

Usage

       The user interface of the IDE has been designed to be similar to  Turbo
       Pascal.  It provides the user with a user friendly, but rather powerful
       editor, an extensive on-line help system and a debugger.

       A text mode windowing system is the base of  the  user  interface.  The
       mouse  is  supported,  but  most people will use the keyboard. The user
       will usually open a few text editor windows in which he will design his
       program, during which he can regularily check and debug through the use
       of hot keys. The high speed of the compiler  ensures  that  programmers
       can do this often and therefore allows speedy development of code.

Help files

       No  help files are provided by default. The user must download the Free
       Pascal documentation in HTML format and install it into the  IDE  using
       the  Help->Files menu. Turbo Pascal .tph files can also be installed in
       this  menu  and  can  be  useful  for  source  code  that  ships   with
       .tphfilesasdocumentation.

Character sets

       The  IDE  has  been designed for VGA text mode fonts. These fonts allow
       visually more interresting text modes than the the VT100 fonts normally
       used  on  Unix  systems  and  also  more portable, since most operating
       systems use VGA character sets for their text modes.

       When running on a VT100 compatible terminal, some emulation will occur.
       Internally  the  IDE  will  think it is running on a VGA text mode font
       (most likely code page 850), while all characters will (in the case  of
       code  page  850)  be converted to Latin-1 and VT100 alternate character
       set characters.

       The Linux console can do VGA fonts and therefore the IDE can be  viewed
       as  it  was  intended on it. The Linux console mode supports the all of
       the VGA character set through the /dev/vcsa* devices  and  most  of  it
       through  normal  escape sequences. To prevent bad user experiences, the
       IDE has been made rather aggressive in using VGA character sets.  First
       it will determine the actual console number you are running on (even if
       you run on a pty, like in Midnight Commander). Then the IDE  will  open
       the  /dev/vcsa*  device  belonging  to  that  console. If permission is
       denied the IDE will call the grab_vcsa utility, which is a setuid  root
       utility which will grant permissions to the vcsa device.

       In  case  the  vcsa  device  is not available, the IDE will send escape
       codes to enable the VGA font. In this mode a few characters in the  low
       32  ascii  positions  are unavailable, but mainly since the full set of
       line  drawing  characters  is  available  the  user  will  notice   few
       differences.

       The  Linux frame buffer device and the Free Pascal IDE are an excellent
       combination.  With fbdev it is possible to use  text  mode  resolutions
       higher  than the normal 80x25, which allows the programmer to see a lot
       more code at a time.

       The Linux console allows the user to load user defined fonts. If you do
       this,  such  a  font  must  have  a  VGA  styled layout, i.e. code page
       437/850/... (Note that this does not mean your file system has  to  use
       such  an  encoding,  the  Linux  console  handles  the  conversion from
       ISO-8859-1, UTF-8 or whatever to the font.)  Since  the  default  fonts
       have  a  code  page  437 layout, only users that have experimented with
       fonts will have to take care here.

       The IDE recognizes the environment variable CONSOLEFONT_CP in which you
       can  specify  the  code page of the console font. Recognized values are
       currently "cp437" and "cp850".  If you do not set  this  variable  code
       page  437  will be assumed. Currently, if you use code page 850 without
       setting the variable there won’t be a huge impact  at  this  time,  the
       characters that the IDE uses exist in both code pages.

       Note:  KOI8-R/KOI8-U  fonts  have all required characters, but the line
       drawing characters are not in the right positions. We may support  this
       in the future, but currently do not.

Keyboard

       Unix  keyboard  handling  is  a  complicated matter because not all key
       combinations  generate  escape  codes,  different  terminal   emulators
       generate  different escape codes, and some key combinations may trigger
       actions in the X11 Window manager.

       Because the Free Pascal IDE’s user interface is designed to be  similar
       to Turbo Pascal, including keyboard commands, you may experience one of
       the above situations.  Some  alternative  keys  have  been  added,  and
       perhaps more will have to be added in the future.

       When  running  on  the  Linux console, the keyboard is reprogrammed for
       full functionality.

       Here are some common problems you  may  encounter  and  possible  work-
       arounds:

       Problem: Selecting text with shift+arrow keys does not work.

       Solution: Use the mouse

       Solution:  Use "ctrl+k b" to mark start of block,"ctrl+k e" to mark end
       of block, "ctrl+k h" to hide the block.

       Problem: Cut/Copy/Paste keys do not work.

       Solution: Go to Options->Environment->Keyboard & mouse and  enable  the
       Microsoft styled Cut/Copy/Paste keys.

       Solution: Use the menu bar.

       Problem: Alt key does not work.

       Solution:  Press Escape first, then the key without alt. Note that this
       is not possible on the Linux console, but the Alt key does work  there.

       If  for  whatever reason the reprogrammed Linux console keyboard is not
       restored to the original state after exit  (IDE  crash?),  you  can  do
       something  like "/etc/init.d/kbd start" to reprogram it into its normal
       behaviour.

AUTHORS

       Free Pascal development team (see http://www.freepascal.org)

SEE ALSO

       grab_vcsa  fpc  fpc.cfg(5)  ppdep(1)  ppudump(1)   ppumove(1)   ptop(1)
       h2pas(1) ld(1) as(1)