The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for November, 2010

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Free ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7, by Charles Petzold – Microsoft Press – Site Home – MSDN Blogs

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/11/10

If you want to do Windows Phone 7 development, then get this book: Programming Windows Phone 7 by Charles Petzod.
The eBook and source code are free:

This book is a gift from the Windows Phone 7 team at Microsoft to the programming community, and I am proud to have been a part of it. Within the pages that follow, I show you the basics of writing applications for Windows Phone 7 using the C# programming language with the Silverlight and XNA 2D frameworks.

Yes, Programming Windows Phone 7 is truly a free download, but for those readers who still love paper—as I certainly do—this book will also be available (for sale)

In addition to C# and VB.NET, you can also do this in Delphi Prism.

Cool times ahead, because now there are 4 major competitors (in no particular order):

  • iPhone
  • Android
  • Windows Phone 7
  • Symbian

I left out the competitors of the past, as they soon will be deprecated.

–jeroen

via Free ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7, by Charles Petzold – Microsoft Press – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, Prism, Software Development | 1 Comment »

More on Delphi x64 by twitter kylix_rd (Allen Bauer)

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/11/09

As a continuation of the previous assembly, the new twitter kylix_rd messages on Delphi x64 (and some reactions by Danny Thorpe):

To save people from browsing Twitter history:

kylix_rd:

Interesting x64 fun fact: RIP relative addressing. Some instructions that use a 32bit offset, are interpreted as [RIP+offs].
7 nov

@danny_thorpe Add x64 and it happens even more.
7 nov

Because of the way the Intel instructions are encoded, it is possible to encode the same effective instruction in different ways.
7 nov

You know what would have made the x64 “REX” prefix moniker even better? They could have called it T-REX.
7 nov

As much as people like to deride the aging x86 architecture, I gotta admit that AMD did a fine job of stretching it into 64bit land.
7 nov

@davidheff Undetermined. There are plenty of reasons to deliver them separately. Either way will have no impact on the results.
2 Nov

Be ready for 64 bit: In Delphi XE, this “Component.Tag := NativeInt(Self);” will just recompile in 64 bit.
2 Nov

@davidheff Oh don’t worry… there will be plenty who will find that “limiting”, if only in concept and not in the real world :-)
2 Nov

x64 Fun Fact: JMP opcodes/offsets are identical to 32bit. Can only xfer control to an address +/- 2GB away. Thus the PE image size limit.
2 Nov

danny_thorpe:

@kylix_rd I remember digging through the x64 specs. Fun times til mgmt shut it down. Still have my Amd x64 laptop circa 2003 or so.
8 nov

@kylix_rd You just noticed? :P
8 nov

davidheff:

@kylix_rd is it still on course to be a cross-compiler as announced by Nick – single 32 bit compiler that can create 32 and 64 bit images
from Stavanger, Rogaland
2 Nov Favorite Retweet Reply

@kylix_rd Actually, I wonder whether the compiler wouldn’t give out first at such a monstrous demand
from Stavanger, Rogaland
2 Nov

@kylix_rd Think most of us should be able to avoid creating 2GB images!!!!
from Stavanger, Rogaland
2 Nov

–jeroen

via Allen Bauer (kylix_rd) on Twitter
Danny Thorpe (danny_thorpe) on Twitter
David Heffernan (davidheff) on Twitter

Posted in Delphi, Development, kylix_rd, SocialMedia, Software Development, Twitter | 5 Comments »

Updating your Endian FireWall Community Edition appliance

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/11/08

When updating one of my Endian FireWall Community Edition VMs, I found out that one of my test VMs was still at version 2.2rc3.

Two important points: The update site (which you can use if you registered) tells you to follow 5 steps to keep your Endian Firewall Community up to date, but forgets to:

  1. point you to the Endian documentation on enabling SSH
  2. mention that one of the steps is conditional, and the condition is phrased “If your Endian Firewall Community is older than version 2.2“.
    Note that all the 2.2 rc versions are considered older than version 2.2, so in those cases, you also need to perform this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, Endian, Power User | Leave a Comment »

#vodafone #3G #UMTS transparent http proxy #fail: it breaks the #hyves on-line mail system

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/11/05

When connecting through Vodafone 3G/UMTS, it leads all http traffic through a transparent proxy.

In The Netherlands, hyves is a pretty popular social network (especially for maintaining the family and friends part of your networks).
Vodafone 3G/UMTS breaks the email functionality of hyves.

The Vodafone transparent proxy loads http://1.2.3.4/bmi-int-js/bmi.js, and I bitten by this proxy before, so it was pretty easy to find the cause.
There is no work around (apart from RDP-ing into a remote machine and doing all the browsing from there).

I’ll blog about what Vodafone does in a future blog post, because they do a couple of things that I think are pretty rude.
But more on that later.

Most important thing to know that if something doesn’t work that normally works, and the only difference is that you are connected through Vodafone 3G/UMTS, then it is probably their transparent HTTP proxy breaking it.

–jeroen

notes:

Posted in Opinions, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Delphi refactoring bugs – need input

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/11/04

One of the reasons that people are wary of using Delphi refactorings, is that some of them are not always reliable.

The only way to get them resolved is filing good bug reports.
But filing a good bug report is difficult: you need reproducible cases, and finding those can be tough.

Some of the refactorings can only be done by tools that have access to the complete compiler.
Which means that 3rd party tools like Model Maker Code Explorer, Castalia, cnPack and others cannot provide.

So I need some help in filing bugs centered around the refactoring topic:

  • Indicate weak points of the various refactorings
  • Help finding reproducible steps

Here are a few examples I filed recently:

  1. [WayBack] “No statements are selected” when performing “Extract Method” refactoring from case statement
  2. [WayBack] Complete case statement extracted when performing “Extract Method” refactoring from case statement
  3. [WayBack] Refactoring “Find Unit” often does not work any more

Please put your suggestions in the comments!

–jeroen

Some notes:

  1. Set Delphi “Block Indent” to 3
  2. Refactor – Extract method: it uses a Block Indent of 2.

Posted in Delphi, Development, QC, Software Development | 6 Comments »

Some ASX information in order to create a partical XSD schema of it

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/11/03

I tried searching for an XSD or other schema that describes ASX (Advanced Stream Redirector) files, but somehow could not find them.

The ASX files can be used to generate a playlist, but they are a bit richer in content than the WPL (Windows Media Player Playlist) file format.

So here is a post with some references to ASX files, examples, documentation and an XSD you could use for ASX files, and why ASX is not valid XML, it is just well-formed. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | 2 Comments »

Interesting Delphi questions on StackOverflow by Ian Boyd in constructors, methods and directives.

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/11/02

Last month, Ian Boyd posted a series of interesting questions on StackOverflow.

They all handle specific situations on methods (especially constructors), classes and directives.

He used them to get a more detailed picture of how that all fits together.

Interesting reading!

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

More Delphi x64 bits – Allen Bauer (kylix_rd) on Twitter

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/11/01

To save people from browsing Twitter history:

danny_thorpe:

@davidheff @kylix_rd x64 has SSE2 for FP ops. 8 directly addressable 64bit XMM FP registers. 8087 FP ops emulated in microcode, deprecated

28 Oct

@kylix_rd You mean critical mass isn’t church service on Christmas and Easter?

27 Oct

@kylix_rd Bah. What do they know about floating point? :P MSVC turns off all the FP hardware (exceptions) by default already!

27 Oct

@kylix_rd Yes, we did. The reason was Extendeds don’t exist at all in CLR. x64 FP ops only supporting 64 bit floats is justification

27 Oct

@kylix_rd Ok, so your cause/effect statement was incomplete. :P Shame to see extendeds go. How to count all atoms in the universe now?

27 Oct

@kylix_rd That doesn’t follow. You could still pass extendeds on the stack (not using the x87 register stack)

27 Oct

kylix_rd:

@davidheff Yes. Alignment is critical. Even the stack must remain properly aligned. Its all part of the ABI.

27 Oct

@davidheff SSE instructions and the xmm0:xmm15 registers.

27 Oct

@danny_thorpe That and the fact that MS strongly discourages the use of the FP coproc on 64 bit Windows.

27 Oct

@danny_thorpe Extendeds don’t align well, FP ops would dumb them down, sub-optimal codegen, are other reasons to drop them.

27 Oct

http://goo.gl/D0Kv. “The x87 register stack is unused. … must be considered volatile across function calls” So, Extended = Double.

27 Oct

As speculated, the Tag property will become a NativeInt.

27 Oct

@malcolmgroves @seanbdurkin And if we change the underlying implementation, don’t complain… mkay?

27 Oct

The elephants in the room. Max 64bit PE image size 4GB. Extended = Double (since xmm0-xmm4 are for FP param passing).

27 Oct

Number of calling conventions in x64 – 1. pascal, register, cdecl, stdcall… gone, treated as nop.

26 Oct

Wow… just a few tweets about D64 and I get flooded with new followers. Welcome to all my new followers from the last 24 hours.

26 Oct

Most common 64bit data models, LP64 and LLP64. Windows = LLP64, Linux, OSX = LP64. D64/Windows = LLP64.

26 Oct

64bit gotcha: SizeOf(THandle/HWND/HMODULE/Hxxxx) = SizeOf(Pointer) = 8. This isn’t valid: Value := Integer(Handle).

26 Oct

Type sizes for 64: SizeOf(Integer)=4, SizeOf(NativeInt)=SizeOf(Pointer)=8,

26 Oct

If you must… Value := Integer(TList[x]) -> Value := NativeInt(TList[x]). Even better, TList.

26 Oct

via Allen Bauer (kylix_rd) on Twitter
Danny Thorpe (danny_thorpe) on Twitter

Posted in 8087, Algorithms, Delphi, Development, Floating point handling, kylix_rd, SocialMedia, Software Development, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

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