Again a new module in the Enigma series. It supports the calculation of paranatellonta (in short: parans). It is written in Free Pascal.
Continuing with Object Pascal
I have been experimenting with several approaches. The most important decision was the programming language. I experimented with Java, Kotlin and Free Pascal. The main advantage of Free Pascal was the support for the GUI, another advantage is the relative stability of the language.
Free Pascal is a free version of the Delphi environment as sold by Embarcadero. Delphi used to be very expensive but about three years ago Embarcadero introduced a Community Edition that was free. And it seems to have quite some advantages compared to Free Pascal. A library that supports Dependency Injection (Spring4D) is available, something that required too much effort in Free Pascal, so I reluctantly had to abandon DI in FP.
I started a pilot project to learn more about the differences. If everything goes well, I will build future software using Delphi. Still Object Pascal but with a lot of the possibilities, I miss in Free Pascal.
Combining the modules
I will combine the modules that I wrote into one application that has four main functionalities: Charts, Cycles, Counting (statistical research), and Calculators (for astronomical calculations). Indeed, 4 C’s 🙂
Source
The source for Parans is available at https://gitlab.com/jkampherbeek/enigma-parans.
Make sure that you read the Developers Manual.
The compiled application is available at: http://radixpro.com/parans. This download includes ephemeris files from the Swiss Ephemeris that are required to run the application and that are not saved at GitLab.