
   Virtual Pascal v2.1 Beta Build 230
   Paris, September 2000
   (C) Copyright 2000 vpascal.com

Thank you for taking an interest in Virtual Pascal.  This document outlines the
installation procedure, and provides last-minute information not included in the
online manuals.

Installation
~~~~~~~~~~~~

To install this version of Virtual Pascal 2.1,

 - Extract all archives you have downloaded to a temporary directory,
   not the one in which Virtual Pascal is to be installed. (Do *not*
   extract the inner archives called W*.RAR, O*.RAR, L*.RAR, and A*.RAR;
   the installation program will do this for you).

 - Run the appropriate installation program, SetupW32.Exe for Windows or
   SetupOs2.Exe for OS/2. This program is a text mode Turbo Vision
   application compiled from the same source code for OS/2 and Win32
   (of course using Virtual Pascal).

 - The licence agreement is displayed. Read it and press Alt-I or select
   the Install option from the File menu to start the installation.

 - The first page of the installation wizard is displayed.  Press the
   Next button to proceed.

 - On the next page, the pre-selection screen, choose from one of 3
   default options.  Select Full Install to install all parts of the
   product, Typical Install to install all components for the current
   platform only, and Custom to pick and choose.
   Press the Next button to continue.

 - Based on your choice on the pre-selection screen, some or all
   components of the installation will be selected for installation.
   Review the settings, by using the Detail button to review the
   inclusion of sub-components.
   Press the Next button to continue.

 - Select the drive to which Virtual Pascal 2.1 should be installed;
   if a drive does not have enough space to install the selected options,
   the drive space indicator will be red.  If installing to such a drive,
   you can insist that there is enough space and continue anyway.
   The directory will be chosen on the next screen.
   Press the Next button to continue.

 - Choose your preference regarding the case of directory names.  You
   can choose UPPER case, lower case or Mixed Case.  All directories
   created by the installation program will use the choice selected
   here.
   Press the Next button to continue.

 - Enter the installation directory, excluding drive letter.  This
   can be any directory (spaces not allowed), whether it exists or
   not.  If it is a new directory, the installation program will ask
   if it should be created for you.
   Press the Next button to continue.

 - If any of the components requiring original source code were included in the
   selection (Object Windows Library, Visual Class Library, OPro) you will be
   prompted to enter the path to the original sources.
   Press the Next button to continue.  If any of the required source files are
   not found, an error message will be displayed and you will be prompted to
   enter a new path.

The installation program will now unpack the selected archives and copy
(and patch, where required) the selected source code. When it has
finished, please read the rest of this readme file. Or, since OS/2 and
Win32 are multitasking systems you can just read it while the
installation program is running. The OS/2 programs are installed to the
BIN.OS2 directory, the Win32 programs to BIN.W32 and the files used for
the experimental Linux support to BIN.LNX.

Full information about Virtual Pascal, the directory structure, etc.
is included as .PDF manuals readable by the free Adobe Acrobat viewer
v3.0 or later.  These files can be found in the DOC directory.


Upgrade Patches
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The upgrade patches for non-VP source code included with this software
is version specific.  This means that the update program requires an original,
unmodified source file in order to be able to perform the update.

The following versions are supported:

Object Windows Library
  v7.00 (Borland Pascal v7.00 or Borland Pascal for Windows)
  v8.00 (Borland Delphi v1.00)
  v8.01 (Borland Delphi v1.01)

Visual Component Library
  v1.00, v2.00, v2.01, v3.00, v4.01, v5.00 (From Borland Delphi of same version)

Object Professional
  v1.30


Known Issues
~~~~~~~~~~~~

This release of Virtual Pascal v2.1 has the following known issues that
you may need to consider:

 - Cut/Paste between the VP IDE and other applications may have a
   problem in Windows 98.

 - The text-only version of the User's Guide, vp21user.txt, is not
   included.  (Word simply refuses to produce it; I'm investigating).

 - Keyboard handling in Win32 for both your own programs and for
   the VP IDE is handled by routines in VpSysLow/VpSysW32.Pas.  On
   some keyboard layouts, these routines cause problems, and the
   VpKbdW32.Dll library can be used to dynamically substitute the
   statically linked keyboard handlers.  Please refer to the source
   code and documentation for more information on this.

 - In several units of the Run-Time Library, definitions are enclosed
   in {$IFDEF DPMI32} .. {$ENDIF} blocks.  However, this release of
   Virtual Pascal does not support 32-bit DOS as a target without
   additional support files, and this code is included in order to
   ease the implementation of 32-bit DOS target code.  For an example
   of such a library, please refer to
   http://www-user.tu-cottbus.de/~kannegv/vpascal

 - In several units of the Run-Time Library, definitions are enclosed
   in {$IFDEF LINUX} .. {$ENDIF} blocks.  Support for the Linux
   platform is very experimental at this stage though, and you should
   not expect it to work very well, if at all.

   A group of VP users has initiated a project to port VP to Linux,
   and can be found at www.trantor.de/joerg.pleumann/.  The Virtual
   Pascal team is working with this group of users to finalise Linux
   support in Virtual Pascal.

 - The built-in linker throws an error message if two resources with
   the same resource ID are included in your program.  This prevents
   resource conflicts and minimises the size of the executable.
   In OS/2, the Resource Editor creates a resource with ID 1 for
   every dialog; to link these resources, manually edit these to
   have different IDs.

 - To better facilitate Linux integration (which requires that the
   executables compiled by VP are converted to ELF format), an
   option to execute a user-defined program after linking has been
   added.  Please refer to the User's Guide for details.


What is new
~~~~~~~~~~~

This release of Virtual Pascal implements a long list of features
requested by Virtual Pascal users worlwide, and corrects several problems
reported in v2.0 and previous beta releases of the product.

Much of the work has gone into making Virtual Pascal compatible with
the Linux operating system; for a complete list of changes, please
refer to the WhatsNew.txt file in the doc\ directory.


Copy protection
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This Beta version of Virtual Pascal v2.1 is (C) Copyright 2000 vpascal.com
and must not be distributed or copied.  Please refer to the licence
agreement in LICENCE.TXT for details.

As opposed to previous versions of Virtual Pascal, no built-in copy
protection system is active in this beta version and the original
distribution archive can be copied and distributed in unmodified form.


Feedback
~~~~~~~~

We want and welcome your feedback!  If you have suggestions or want
to report a bug, please refer to the FEEDBACK.TXT file in the DOC
directory.  It contains a list of the data we require to handle the
feedback most efficiently.

If at all possible, please submit feedback to feedback@vpascal.com.


Manuals
~~~~~~~

Comprehensive manuals covering the use of Virtual Pascal v2.1 and a
complete language reference are included as Adobe Portable Document
Format (PDF) files in the DOC directory.

The User's guide, VP21USER.PDF, introduces the installation program,
features of VP v2, IDE usage, debugger, and cross-platform support.

The Language Reference, VP21LANG.PDF, provides in-depth documentation
of the Pascal language as implemented by Virtual Pascal.

Both documents can be viewed using the widely available free Adobe
Acrobat Reader v3.0 or later, and can be printed to provide a hard
copy manual.

The manuals are secured from changing, although users of Adobe Exchange
can add notes to the documents.

The User Manual is also included in plain text format, as VP21USER.TXT,
for easier viewing and searching on less powerful machines.


Contact Address
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Feedback should be directed to

  Support issues:       support@vpascal.com
  Registrations:        registrations@vpascal.com
  Bug reports:          feedback@vpascal.com
  Other issues:         vpascal@vpascal.com

  WWW:                  http://www.vpascal.com

Trademarks
~~~~~~~~~~
  Company names, brand names and product names are trademarks or
  registered trademarks of their respective holders.
