Question

I’ve heard that Delphi’s NEW Rad Studio XE2 has something called FireMonkey that will allow the same code to build Windows 32, Windows 64 and MacOS applications.

If this is true, this is huge. Where can I get the technical documentation that talks about FireMonkey?

EDIT:

I’m interested in the MacOS. Several people have asked me when I’m releasing a Mac version of my software and I keep telling them I’m not. I asked this question back in March (4 months ago) and no one said anything about FireMonkey. What version of Delphi will let me create software that runs on a Mac?

MODERATOR QUESTION:

Should this be a wiki?

Answer 1

FireMonkey comes from the former DXScene library, which has been acquired by Embarcadero.

You’ve plenty of information and screenshots in this blog site:
http://ksdev.blogspot.com/

Eugene wrote in his forum that all registered users (like me) will get the Embarcadero version “for free”…

Here are the features of DXScene – working with FreePascal compiler to run under Linux or Mac OS X:

DXScene is 3D hardware accelerated graphics library Delphi/C++
Builder/Lazarus.

• Hardware accelerated graphics on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
• 3D and 2D graphical editor integrated in IDE
• Powerful 3D layer containing items such as Cube, Sphere, Cone,
  Plane, Mesh, free Camera and Lights
• Mesh object have WPF mesh data format, DXScene have advanced import
  tool which support –
  GLSM,WRL,TIN,STL,SMD,Q3BSP,BSP,PLY,OCT,OBJ,OBJF,NURBS,NMF,MS3D,MDC,MD2,LWO,GTS,GLM,GLX,GLA,B3D,MD5MESH,MD5ANIM,MD3,3DS,PRJ
  file formats
• Powerful 2D vector engine like Adobe Flash or Microsoft WPF includes
  high quality shapes and controls like window, label, button, checkbox,
  textbox and more
• Advanced GUI engine – window, button, textbox, numberbox, memo,
  anglebox, list box and much much more
• Advanced skinning engine based on vector graphics styles. Cool
  exists styles – Dark, Modern, Vista.
• DXScene can be used to create hardware accelerated 2D applications
  with cool animation like CoverFlow, layer and more
• Easy to use time-based animation and transition effects
• Layered windows, Jpeg, Png, Tiff and Gif format read/write support,
  fast thumbnail creation
• Realtime mode for games and realtime simulations
• DXScene can be used as development tools for SCADA, GIS, CAD and
  KIOSK applications
• DB-Aware controls – TvxDBNavigator, TvxDBLabel, TvxDBTextBox and
  more Multilanguage engine, editor and examples
• Physics simulation using Newton Game Dynamics
• Cross-platform solution available on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS
  X and Linux

We can guess that FireMonkey will have some of these features, depending on the new Delphi XE2 cross-compiling features. Will it build OSX, iOS, Linux apps? Does it require XCode?

In short, FireMonkey will allow you:

• To build 32 bit and 64 bit Windows or 32 bit Mac OS X native applications, and debug them from the Delphi IDE, running in Windows – but you need a Mac computer to run remotely the OSX app;
• To build iOS native application, with XCode-based debugging – in fact, the iOS simulator in OSX runs in x86/x64 mode, and the FreePascalCompiler is used to create ARM applications;
• Applications may be 2D (with controls) or 3D (using DirectX under Windows or OpenGL under Mac);
• To build DB-related applications, using the new Live Bindings feature.

But FireMonkey is not compatible with the GUI part of the VCL. It’s a brand new library, with its own architecture, which is indeed based on the former DXScene.

All details available at http://www.deltics.co.nz/blog/?p=735

I think Mac OS X support is reduced to 32 bit version, because FireMonkey uses the Carbon API, which is 32 bit only. See http://developer.apple.com/carbon
It’s worth saying that making a Mac OS X 64 bit version will need to use an “Objective C” syntax (or linking) and direct Cocoa. Some additional work…

I’m still waiting for the Linux version. FireMonkey ancestor (aka DXScene) was already Linux ready (using GTK/Pango/Cairo/OpenGL), and they already have an ELF linker in-house (the one from Kylix, which was very good). I understand that Mac OS X had a higher priority in the list, since it’s a more common platform for desktop computing. But for server applications, Linux is a most have. In XE3, may be?

Edit: previous “pessimistic” version – extracted 😉

Edit: I’ve made some screenshots of DXScene components demo – it may help you have a better impression on what FireMonkey will be.