> {quote:title=Dean Smith wrote:}{quote}
> In answer to your question it seems version is dead in the water, So the best possible answer here would be to open source it.
>
> I have version 1 and 2 with maintainance support will i be getting version 3 for free........
>
> I have yet to develop anything in D4PHP which has been any good. For developing now I use Codecharge Studio,Netbeans.
>
> So unless D4PHP can compete with these products dont even try.Remebering Netbeans is free.

Codecharge Studio is a paint by numbers toy without even a debugger. Netbeans is not really optimised for PHP but you would need this to compensate for CodeCharge's shortcomings.

Delphi for PHP stiull has the greatest potential of any of the current PHP IDE's and is also flawed in some seriously annoying ways. What IDE traps an attempt to save over a read only file as an unhandled "Access is denied" exception that is then suggesting that "error" be sent over the Internet by email to support@qadram.com ??. Duh. There are dozens of such idiotic things in this IDE.

However there are many upsides. Nothing comes even close to the visual designer two way tools concept. However D4PHP desparately needs an injection of talent and capability now and some kind of marketing budget in order to survive. It needs books and how-to manuals, more third party control developers and a coherent community of practice needs to be cultivated. Unfortunately the project has been leaderless and unfocussed for many months now, partly as a result of the Embarcadero acquisition and only has
a short window of opportunity to redeem itself. If we use markers of activity like blogs, forum postings, QC reports, Sourceforge developer mailing lists and Jose Leon's ability to answer email as indiators of the health of the project then one might realistically consider that the product is on a ventilator in ICU. I hope Michael Rozlog is good at software CPR. The only healthy sign is that Delphi for PHP seems to be a popular target for warez downloaders?? as thats about all Google ever seems to alert i
n its blog aggregation.

It, D4PHP also has been pitched/perceived as a PHP for dummies tool when the cruel reality is that it actually requires an expert level of PHP/Javscript to build robust enterprise grade applications. This has been the cause of much heartache for non-programmers and entry-level developers who have become disillusioned and dispirited when their dreams of rapidly gluing an application together weren't realised.

Rumour has it that the new improved roadmap is nearing completion. One can then make plans and decisions.. Also one hopes that the project to extend the VCL for PHP as a byproduct of the commercial development that qadram is doing will yield VCL for PHP benefits including insight into the flaws and limitations of the IDE that can feed into Crocodile. There are bright lights in that a book on Delphi for PHP development has been published in Portuguese recently and there are healthy numbers of developers in
Japan and so on. There are some preliminary signs that QC completions are ramping up again in anticipation of a beta of Delphi for PHP 3. D4PHP Should also benefit from being compiled in Delphi 2009 with better Unicode support. PHP itself continues to be a widespread used language and is becoming increasingly professionalised in its approach to development and architecture, standards, best practices, frameworks and so on. Its rapidly evolving thing and D4PHP can still swim with that broader PHP movement.


So while we need to be realists we also need to be fully engaged in collaborating with Embarcadero where possible as we are talking about an ecosystem of many contributors, users, vendors, components, repositories etc not just a simple monetary exchange for a piece of software. Some of the responsibility for the apparent lack of sucess for D4PHP probably has to be pinned on the users and developers who invested in this tool but didnt perhaps invest in its success.?