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One flies on a plane and tries to solve some issue with your app. Oops, here comes the failure

For actionable information you really should contact your sales rep at Embarcadero for this information. I will say that the cost of renewing the subscription goes up every single year. The last year I renewed I opted for the five-year term so I could lock in the price, calculating that they will never actually lower it and I am probably going to need the updates. I think the annual renewal worked out to US $530/yr with the offered discounts when I paid for 5 years up front, back in 2021. My emails indicate that they were advertising this as a way to avoid the "4% uplift" every year. I doubt it's only 4% (given US inflation since then) now but I have no idea really.

We have just released an open-source Delphi implementation for a HTML-based cross-platform application help system. Information page: Ziphelp - an open cross-platform help format Direct download link: https://www.helpandmanual.com/download/delphi-ziphelp-demo-source.zip About Ziphelp On the surface, Ziphelp is basically HTML in a compressed zip archive, hence the name. Pack any folder with HTML files into a zip archive and you are good to go. But Ziphelp is more than that, it is a protocol based on the standard sitemap protocol, designed to give a help viewer (here: the Delphi implementation) extended information about the content of the help system. That is help context numbers, help keywords, associative keywords, page titles. This information is missing in a standard sitemap.xml. Ziphelp extends the sitemap protocol and enables direct communication of an app with the help system. The Ziphelp protocol is not just for zip archives. It works inside an archive, with uncompressed folders or with HTML content loaded directly from a website. A Delphi desktop app may be deployed with local application help, uncompressed, zipped or embedded. A mobile or web application might not ship with local HTML content, but refer to an online version instead. The mechanism is the same in both cases and the TZiphelp component implements this for Delphi. Demo Application A demo app for VCL and FMX (Win/MacOS) is included. The demo builds on standard Delphi components (TWebBrowser) to display the help system.

Just an slightly related aside. You can use ChatGPT to convert a curl command to delphi code. It is handy because a lot of REST api documentation may have a curl command for a call, but no Delphi version.

I use the "Attach to Process" approach when debugging my services. Also, if I want to debug the service's startup logic, I pass in a particular startup parameter via the SCM, and then add code in the service's OnStart event to look for that parameter and if present then hold the service in csStartPending state until the debugger attaches.

See this: https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Alexandria/en/Debugging_Service_Applications

Usually each release comes with a bunch of bugs fixed, and a new set of bugs released into the wild. I do think the product is slowly getting better though.

Sorry, but what are you talking about? You said you don't know Lazarus but you say you want a Delphi like Lazarus, you decline a series of features without knowing them or having tried them. Try using Lazarus with your project, install Lazarus on Linux and work from there and then try to "distribute" your work to other Linux PCs: X11 and Wayland, Linux 4.xx, Linux 5.xx, Linux 6.xx , GTK2, GTK3, GTK3.2 GTK+, GTK4, QT5, QT5Moded, QT6, etc .... I won't continue to mention all the libraries otherwise .... Let's not talk about the distros (Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu just to name a few some common). Are you sure you want a Delphi like this? Fmx runs in a few OS (Linux, Mac, Android and IOS, as well as Windows) but at least the environment is unique. Use third-party libraries and see if they also run in all operating systems supported by Lazarus. FastReport for example on Lazarus only runs on Windows and Linux. Lazarus really doesn't have "skins". And, just to be clear, "skins" also exist in FMX, not just in VCLs. Etc... As others have said, it is better to have the IDE that is there now and most of the engineering resources dedicated to this IDE rather than splitting efforts and finding ourselves with new IDEs with new problems and the old one with old unsolved problems. The time will also come for a Delphi on "Mars", but only when the time is ripe. Bye

Hm, looks like I actually finished that work I was talking about, and had forgotten 😉

I'm quite sure that the people at TIOBE are driven night and day by their intense feelings of envy towards Delphi. I really can't imagine they think about anything else.