Chapter 27 Further Reading

Official Documentation

  • Lazarus Wiki — Getting Started: wiki.lazarus-ide.org/Getting_Started — The official starting point for new Lazarus users. Covers installation, IDE orientation, and the first project tutorial.

  • Lazarus Wiki — IDE Tutorial: wiki.lazarus-ide.org/Lazarus_IDE_Tools — Detailed walkthrough of every IDE feature: form designer, Object Inspector, component palette, debugger, and project management.

  • Free Pascal Reference Guide: freepascal.org/docs-html/ref/ref.html — The definitive reference for the Free Pascal language. Covers compiler directives like {$mode objfpc}` and `{$H+} used in Lazarus projects.

  • LCL Documentation: lazarus-ccr.sourceforge.io/docs/lcl/ — API reference for the Lazarus Component Library. Every class, property, method, and event is documented here.

Books

  • Mattias Gaertner & Michael Van Canneyt, "Lazarus Free Pascal Development" — A practical guide to building applications with Lazarus, covering everything from basic forms to database programming and reporting.

  • Marco Cantù, "Object Pascal Handbook" — While focused on Delphi, the language coverage applies directly to Lazarus. The chapters on the component model and event-driven architecture are particularly relevant.

  • Michaël Van Canneyt, "Modern Object Pascal Introduction for Programmers" — Available free online. Covers the Object Pascal dialect used by both Free Pascal and Delphi.

Online Resources

  • Lazarus Forums: forum.lazarus-ide.org — The primary community forum. Active, helpful, and searchable. If you have a question about Lazarus, someone has probably already asked and answered it here.

  • Free Pascal / Lazarus Mailing Lists: Available at freepascal.org/maillist.html — For deeper technical questions and compiler/IDE development discussions.

  • Lazarus on GitHub: github.com/fpc/Lazarus — The source code of Lazarus itself. Reading the LCL source is one of the best ways to understand how components work internally.

Historical Context

  • Anders Hejlsberg, "A Brief History of Delphi" — Understanding Delphi's history helps explain why Lazarus is designed the way it is. Hejlsberg designed Turbo Pascal and the original Delphi before moving to Microsoft to create C#.

  • Danny Thorpe, "Delphi Component Design" (1996) — The classic reference on the Delphi component model. Old but still relevant — the PME architecture described in this book is the same architecture used by the LCL.

Conceptual Background

  • Event-driven programming: Alan Kay's original Smalltalk environment (1970s) pioneered event-driven GUI programming. The message-passing model that Lazarus inherits from Delphi and Windows is a direct descendant of Kay's work. For a modern perspective, see the Wikipedia article on "Event-driven programming."

  • RAD (Rapid Application Development): James Martin coined the term in his 1991 book of the same name. The visual form designer approach that Lazarus uses was pioneered by Visual Basic (1991) and perfected by Delphi (1995).