fd2pascal(1)

💖 fd2pascal — the manual, but make it make sense 💖

okay bestie, so you found fd2pascal in section 1 of the manual (that's "user commands", the general-vibes section, iykyk) and you want the tea ☕. Say less. This is fd2pascal — the Free Pascal forms description to pascal program converter. It's giving "I turn your pretty little designer file into actual code" and honestly? Iconic. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

fd2pascal — Free Pascal forms description to pascal program converter. That's her whole job description and she's slaying it. 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

fd2pascal [-compensate] [-altformat] [-main] [-callback] filename

One command, one filename, a handful of little flag besties. That's the whole vibe check. ✨

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So here's the situation, gorgeous: fd2pascal reads an XForms designer file — that's the .fd one, you know the one — and it creates pascal code to create the form that's described in that file. She's basically a translator but make it compiler-adjacent. 🧚

And where does all that gorgeous pascal code go? It gets written to a file with the same name as the input file, except the extension becomes .pp. Simple. Clean. Obsessed.

⚠️ but wait — plot twist 😭 — if a file with that name already exists, then it will be renamed to a file with the extension .bak appended. So your old file isn't deleted, she just puts it in a little .bak outfit and moves on. Protect your files, bestie, that's the lesson.

💜 OPTIONS 💜

fd2pascal has a small number of options to control its behaviour. Small but mighty, fr fr:

• -altformat — okay so by default, a record type is emitted for the form definition, with a field for each widget (object) on the form. The alternate form? It declares a global variable for the form and each widget on the form. Two totally different aesthetics, pick your fave. 🦋
• -compensate — give her this flag and a call to fl_adjust_form_size is emitted after the form is created. That's it, that's the whole thing. Adjusting, compensating, thriving. ✨
• -callback — with this one, a callback procedure is generated for each widget on the form. Every single one. No widget left behind, periodt. 💅
• -main — so by default a unit is created, which you can include in the uses clause of a program. But if you specify this option, a program file is emitted instead. Unit mode vs program mode — main character energy either way. 👑

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• ppc386(1)

and that's the whole page, babe 🫶. This little love letter was brought to you by Free Pascal, dated 12 November 2004, and it lives under the name fd2pascal(1). Yes she's an elder but she still eats. 💖🌸✨