Delphi Front End Transpiler

This documentation delves into all aspects of the front end transpiler tool, used for translating legacy Delphi DFM files into moder React/TypeScript code.

It starts with parsing Delphi VCL components, represented by the .dfm files. Going into details of designing the DFM grammar, which provide a solid foundation and inform the reader on techniques used for expanding said grammar (if necessary in the future).

Once the foundations have been established, a refined and ready-to-use DFM grammar will be looked at, and will be parsed using ANTLR4 in later sections. The foundation of this project is ANTLRv4, therefore it's setup and usage are also elaborated upon, in great detail.

The transpiler tool will leverage Abstract Syntax Trees (AST) of the legacy code, and translate them into modern intermediate models of the same level. For this, the documentation delves into implementing AST generation from the created DFM grammar (of previous sections), to ultimately be used as reference in generating a modern React/TypeScript AST.

In concordance with the AST generation chapter, sections elaborating transformation rules will assimilate into it, as essential design decisions.

To be continued after further developments...