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Turbo Vision

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the TV tuner, see TurboVision.
Developer(s)Borland
Initial release1990; 35 years ago (1990)
Written in
Operating systemMS-DOS
PlatformIBM PC compatible PC-98
TypeWidget toolkit
LicensePublic domain software[1][2]
Websitetvision.sf.net
Turbo Vision based IDE for Turbo C++

Turbo Vision is a character-mode text user interface framework included with Borland Pascal, Turbo Pascal, and Borland C++ circa 1990. It was used by Borland itself to write the integrated development environments (IDE) for these programming languages. By default, Turbo Vision applications replicate the look and feel of these IDEs, including edit controls, list boxes, check boxes, radio buttons and menus, all of which have built-in mouse support. Later it was deprecated in favor of Object Windows Library, the Win16 API, and the GUI tools of Borland Delphi.

Around 1997, the C++ version, including source code, was released by Borland into the public domain[1][2] and is currently being ported and developed by an open-source community on SourceForge under the GPL license.[3] An older update of the Borland code by Sergio Sigala is available under the BSD license.[citation needed]

The Pascal version, which was distributed alongside Borland Pascal 7 on a "bonus" disk, was never released under a free software license, so the Free Pascal project recreated its own version by backporting a clone made by Leon de Boer that ran in graphical mode back to textmode. The result is called Free Vision.[4] Over the years this codebase has grown stable on nearly all operating systems and architectures that FPC supports. The textmode IDE is very close to the original TP environment, with built-in compiler and IDE much closer than e.g. RHIDE, and supporting functionality like code folding.

Unicode support

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One of the factors limiting Turbo Vision's popularity was the absence of Unicode support in the original Borland version. As of October 2020, there are Unicode versions for C++[5] and Free Pascal.[6]

Third-party implementations

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Third-party Turbo Vision implementations
Project name Active Latest release Last update Unicode support Language Graphical Platforms License
Turbo Vision (magiblot)[7][8] Yes No stable releases (according to GitHub)[7][8] As of May 2025, project is active[8] Yes (UTF-8)[7][8] C++[7][8] No DOS, Linux, Windows[7][8] MIT[8]
Free Vision[9][10][11] Yes FPC 3.2.2[12] As of February 2025, project is active[13] Yes (since February 2022)[9][10][11] Pascal[9][10][11] No Most platforms supported by FPC (tested on Linux and Windows)[9][10][11] LGPL with linking exception[9]
TVision port to the GNU compiler[14] No 2.0.3[14] 17 November 2016[14] No C++[14] No DOS, FreeBSD, Linux, QNX, Solaris and Win32[14] GPL[14]
Port for Virtual Pascal[15] No 2.1 Build 279[15] 13 May 2004[15] No information Pascal[15] No Windows, OS/2, Linux[15] No information
GraphVision[16][17] No 2.01[16][17] 23 April 2001 (file date)[16] No information Pascal[16][17] Yes DOS (graphics mode)[16][17] No information
TVision (Sergio Sigala)[18] No 0.8[18] 10 August 2001[18] No C++[18] No Linux and FreeBSD[18] BSD-like[18]
Port for TMT Pascal[19][20] No Not specified 18 August 2000 (file date)[20] No information Pascal[19][20] No DOS (TMT Pascal)[19][20] No information
Graphics Vision (MKM Software)[21] No 3.0 (DOS/DPMI/Windows), 2.10R2, 2.01 (DOS)[21] 9 February 1999 (version 3.0)[21] No information Pascal[21] Yes DOS, Windows, Linux (GV/FPC), DPMI[21] Free for individual use, commercial license, DOS libraries - LGPL[21]
Super Vision[22] No 2.2[22] Unknown No information Pascal[22] Yes DOS (SVGA)[22] No information

Applications using Turbo Vision

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Tvision "What about copyrights? [...] According to a FAQ entry in the Borland's site (was in http://www.inprise.com/devsupport/bcppbuilder/faq/QNA906.html[permanent dead link] when I saw it) the code is public domain. I also asked in the Borland's newsgroup and the TeamB people (not official people but they are who give technical support in the net) said me the FAQ was right."
  2. ^ a b Turbo Vision - by Borland Developer Support Staff on community.borland.com/ "Question: Where can I find the public domain version of Turbo Vision? Answer: It can be found at ftp.inprise.com/pub/borlandcpp/devsupport/archive/turbovision/" (1998, archived)
  3. ^ tvision.sf.net on sf.net
  4. ^ Free Vision on freepascal.org
  5. ^ "Turbo Vision". GitHub. 26 October 2021.
  6. ^ "Free Vision - Free Pascal wiki". wiki.freepascal.org. Retrieved 2022-02-07.
  7. ^ a b c d e "Turbo Vision". GitHub. 26 October 2021.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g "magiblot/tvision: A modern port of Turbo Vision 2.0, the classical framework for text-based user interfaces. Now cross-platform and with Unicode support". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  9. ^ a b c d e "Free Vision - Free Pascal wiki". wiki.freepascal.org. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  10. ^ a b c d "Free Vision - Free Pascal wiki". wiki.freepascal.org. Retrieved 2022-02-07.
  11. ^ a b c d e f "Free Software for DOS, Text Editors".
  12. ^ "Free Pascal - Advanced open source Pascal compiler for Pascal and Object Pascal - Home Page". www.freepascal.org. Retrieved 2025-05-31.
  13. ^ https://gitlab.com/freepascal.org/fpc/source/-/commits/main/packages/fv?ref_type=heads
  14. ^ a b c d e f "Turbo Vision port to the GNU compiler and more". tvision.sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on 2006-08-19. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  15. ^ a b c d e "Virtual Pascal: Article / Main Features". web.archive.org. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  16. ^ a b c d e "Скачать GraphVision v2.01. Графический TV - Turbo Pascal". tpdn.ru. Archived from the original on 2022-02-12. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  17. ^ a b c d "GraphVision v2.01. Графический TV". pascal.sources.ru. Archived from the original on 2022-02-12. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  18. ^ a b c d e f "TVision homepage". www.sigala.it. Archived from the original on 2022-02-12. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  19. ^ a b c "Turbo Vision 2.0 Ported to TMT Pascal". pascal.sources.ru. Archived from the original on 2022-02-12. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  20. ^ a b c d "Скачать Turbo Vision 2.0 Ported to TMT Pascal - Turbo Pascal". tpdn.ru. Archived from the original on 2022-02-12. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  21. ^ a b c d e f "MKM Software". www.math.ucdavis.edu. Archived from the original on 2022-02-12. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  22. ^ a b c d "Graphics Vision v2.2 - Turbo Vision for SVGA Graphix". pascal.sources.ru. Archived from the original on 2022-02-12. Retrieved 2022-02-12.
  23. ^ Rudge, Owen (2025-03-24), orudge/osplus, retrieved 2025-05-28
  24. ^ "tmbasic/THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md at master · tmbasic/tmbasic". GitHub. Retrieved 2025-05-28.
  25. ^ magiblot (2025-05-17), magiblot/tvterm, retrieved 2025-05-28
  26. ^ magiblot (2025-05-17), magiblot/tvterm, retrieved 2025-05-28
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