Forum

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Revision as of 22:08, 22 February 2016 by Skalogryz (talk | contribs) (adding TOC. The page is long so it's better to see the contents first)
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Lazarus and Freepascal forum is a common place to ask questions and the best place for discussions. It's more user friendly way of communication and might be preferred by beginning users than mailing list.

http://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org

The forum was acting as the welcome page for Lazarus project for a while.

Use code tags

Especially, if you're asking for help.

When you're pasting a big or small chunk of code into the forum. It's by default treated as a normal text. It's not aligned as code should (no fixed font applies). If indentation is used in the code (and it should), it might go wrong, making the code hard to read. forum1.PNG

Also, parts of you pasted code might be considered as mark up by the forum engine, causing undesirable look.

A code like this:

forum2.PNG

Ends up looking like that:

forum3.PNG

As a result, instead of getting actual help, you might hear requests to "use code tags!". Using code tags is easy. All you need to do is add

[code]

in the beginning of a section of your code and add

[/code]

in the end of the section of your code.


Keep in mind, that once you've made a post and forgot to put code tags, you can "MODIFY" and add them. Just like this:

forum4.PNG

forum5.PNG

forum6.PNG

Once changes are done and you hit "Save", you should see a nice Code section appearing in your post. The code section would show the code with fixed-width font. A smaller box with ability to select code quickly. Your code would not be mistreated as a forum markup as will be shown as it is.

forum7.PNG

Most importantly, using code tags is yet another form of on-line politeness.

Share the Outcome

Forum is a common place to get help. If you run into a trouble and cannot figure this out by yourself and even Googled a lot, the forum is the best place to ask.

There're many experienced people who are eager to help you.

But, as soon as you get your answer, and you have your problem resolved. Please let everyone else know! That the proposed solution did work.

It's very easy to get overexcited, once things start working again, that you could forget to tell everyone else. Please DON'T forget, because we'd like to know, and anyone else who would run into the same issue, would like to know it either.

The same applies, if you've created a thread, didn't get the answer yet, but found the solution (by yourself, or somewhere else). Please DO NOT LEAVE the thread you've started orphaned. Just say, that solution is there.

Mark a thread as resolved

The easiest way to indicate that you're problem is solved - is to put the prefix into the thread subject. It's done easily (if you're original thread author).

  • go to the very first post of the thread
  • Modify the first message
  • You should see "Subject" of the message. The subject defines the subject of the thread.
  • Add [SOLVED] to the begging of the subject (leave the rest of the subject as it is).
  • Hit Save.

This is also useful to fix typos if thread subject.