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Zeus - by Friends-of-FPC
Zeus is the usual Windows programmers editor/ ide for Windows. The feature list sounds impressive, though: project/workspace management, integrated CVS version control, built in class browsing and intellisensing and of course support for many programming languages. Sound impressive. Especially the class browsing and intellisensing had me going as I know this stuff fom Visual Studio and always missed it with my Pascal IDE.
The installation is easy through the usual Windows installer. It also allows deeper control over the configuration: which file extensions should be assigned and so on. Nice.
After startup you are confronted with a clean interface with LOADS of menus. The configuration is simple and within 2 minutes I compiled my first program with FPC. Right then the first negative point hit me: the compiler output is just a normal window - and not located at the bottom as it is standard with IDEs nowadays. And that my friends sucks.
The project management had me going on the other hand. Zeus has extensive possibilities for project management. But falls short when it comes to Pascal. Zeus seems not aware of a little thing called "Object Pascal". If you use the regular Pascal settings it does not know classes and so on. So all you can really use with Pascal is a nice project management and handling.
But I'm afraid there are a few minor things that bugged me. First of all, the menus are not very intuitive IMHO. They take some time to get used to. On the other hand: what doesn't? Secondly you can only assign executable files as tool. No help files and the like. There are no templates for opening certain file types and I haven't found a way to add or edit the toolbars.
But hey, there you have the "under construction". Wait a little while and hopefully you'll find everything you need. And it's for free, so no real moaning about the price. People who like the VC++ IDE may really like this.
Zeus Homepage
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