Pascal (and FreePascal) is one of my preferred programming languages.
To have a great IDE you should use Lazarus IDE at
http://www.lazarus-ide.org/
It is a complete IDE and the full FreePascal compiler in one package.
There was a time when I was seriously thinking to stop developing thinBasic using PowerBasic compiler and start using FreePascal.
I also tried to use FreePascal as a backend compiler for developing thinBasic modules. I was able to develop some modules for almost all kind of variables but the kind of string we use in thinBasic (BSTR Ole32 strings) are not so compatible with FreePascal strings. In theory FreePascal WideStrings should be compatible (or equivalent) to BSTR OLE32 strings but in praxtice there are some problems returning strings from function calling. Here some info:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9...ue-for-interop
Maybe some day I will retry making some serious tests.