Pascal / Delphi / Pascal Script tags

Question

I have a concern about the tags delphi, pascal-script, pascal that I'm not sure how it can be solved properly.

A short summary about the different things:

• Pascal is the original language, created in the 1970s.
• Delphi is an object-oriented version of Pascal. Can also be called "Object Pascal".
• Pascal Script is a component/library that can be used inside Object Pascal applications, letting you run code dynamically within the application. (Kind of like a Java classloader can load external code and run it, but a bit more advanced than that).

I have just re-tagged two questions that were tagged with pascal-script and tagged them as pascal instead. Because Pascal Script and Pascal are two entirely different things.

However, a problem is that Pascal is not a very popular tag, and it is possible that the questions I re-tagged actually are Delphi / Object Pascal, but only using the basic Pascal features.

Likewise, Pascal-Script is also not a popular tag, ending up with only one question after my edits.

I feel that these languages are so similar that I don't think three tags are required. They share so much that perhaps only one tag is required?

It's been a while since used Delphi and/or Pascal though, which is why I am bringing this to meta.

How to sort this out?

Answer 1

How to tag Inno Setup questions ?

What I'm missing in the question you linked is the inno-setup tag. That's the major tag there, because even if Inno Setup installer uses Pascal Script as a scripting engine, we can talk about it as a separate "language". So that's what I would add except pascal-script to that question (notice the - char I used because if we would follow the rule of using - char, it would be needed here, because the product is called Pascal Script, not PascalScript, so what is on Stack Overflow is actually wrong; what you used in your question is correct).

For tagging Inno Setup questions I would suggest to use inno-setup tag followed by the pascal-script when the question is related to the [Code] section of the installation script.

Can we merge Pascal and Delphi tag ?

About Pascal and Delphi; Delphi is a language based on Pascal but we can't mix them. Tagging delphi questions with pascal might be invalid in many cases because Delphi lives its own wayward live whilst Pascal enjoys its pension. They are just different languages that cannot be interchanged. So no, even delphi and pascal tags should be kept both (as you already know).

Finally, you can build a Delphi application which will use pascal-script as a scripting language by which you introduce a new Pascal Script based language subset and if you'll be famous enough, you can get your own tag here.

My suggestion...

I second to what rolfl said; I would keep all as it is, because I don't think that even tagging questions by some general pascal-delphi-pascal-script tag (e.g. that object-pascal) would increase number of people answering here somehow. Maybe some cookies would :)

Answer 2

SO has pascal, delphi, and pascalscript (note, no - in pascalscript).

SO also has object-pascal which indicates it is a super-set of free-pascal and delphi

My 'research' indicates that the three are treated distinctly in different places, and should be treated distinctly here.

I vote, what we have is fine. The concepts are distinct enough to group the code, and even though the volume is 'low', the different tags make sense. At least as much sense as different c and c++ makes, as well as, for example, tcsh or c# ... ;-)