The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for the ‘Development’ Category

Dutch translations for English software terms (Nederlandse vertalingen voor Engelse software termen)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/10

A while ago I assisted to translate parts of some software from English to Dutch.

Knowing from the last, that there were on-line guidelines for this, I tried to find them back.

That was tough, and I got a feeling many of the past ones vanished.

Here are some links – in the order I browsed them – for a future self in case I want to find them again (in bold, the useful resources):

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Windows Installer is transactional, but combined with NTFS and installer processes is not fully: do more C:\Config.msi vulnerabilities exist? (plus a truckload of information on Windows SIDs)

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/10

Over the last years a few C:\Windows.msi vulnerabilities have been discovered (and fixed), of which some are linked below.

The core is that the Windows Installer tries to be transactional, and NTFS is, but the combination with installer processes isn’t.

That leads into vulnerabilities where you can insert malicious Roll Back Scripts (.rbs files) and Roll Back Files (.rbf files), and I wonder if by now more have been discovered.

So this post is a kind of reminder to myself (:

Oh, and I learned much more about whoami on Windows, as there  whoami /groups shows very detailed SID information. From that, I learned more on the internals of SIDs too!

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Blue team, C++, Development, Power User, Red team, Security, Software Development, Visual Studio C++, Windows, Windows Development | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Run Windows 3.1 in True-Colour Full HD: GitHub – PluMGMK/vbesvga.drv: Modern Generic SVGA driver for Windows 3.1

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/09

This is soooo cool: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – PluMGMK/vbesvga.drv: Modern Generic SVGA driver for Windows 3.1

Modern Generic SVGA driver for Windows 3.1
This is a rewrite of the Windows 3.1 SVGA driver, designed to support ALL available 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit graphic modes on any system providing the VESA BIOS Extensions (hence the VBE in the name). It is based on the Video 7 SVGA driver included in the Win16 Driver Development Kit, with most of the hardware-specific code gutted out, and with support added for multi-byte pixels.

Related:

It reminds me of other endevours to keep retro-software easy to use: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Assembly Language, Delphi, Delphi 1, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 3.11, x86 | Leave a Comment »

From Turbo Pascal to Delphi to C# to TypeScript, an interview with PL legend Anders Hejlsberg – YouTube

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/09

Nice historic perspective: [Wayback/Archive] From Turbo Pascal to Delphi to C# to TypeScript, an interview with PL legend Anders Hejlsberg – YouTube

Via [Wayback/Archive] Zack Urlocker on Twitter: “Great interview with @ahejlsberg on the evolution of programming languages, the rise of TypeScript and more. Anders is one of the best programmers I ever worked with. …”

--jeroen

Posted in .NET, Borland Pascal, C#, Delphi, Development, History, JavaScript/ECMAScript, MS-DOS, Pascal, Scripting, Software Development, Turbo Pascal, TypeScript, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – PiSCSI/piscsi: PiSCSI allows a Raspberry Pi to function as emulated SCSI devices (hard disk, CD-ROM, and others) for vintage SCSI-based computers and devices. This is a fork of the RaSCSI project by GIMONS.

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/08

Cool (and available both for regular Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi Zero):

[Wayback/Archive] GitHub – PiSCSI/piscsi: PiSCSI allows a Raspberry Pi to function as emulated SCSI devices (hard disk, CD-ROM, and others) for vintage SCSI-based computers and devices. This is a fork of the RaSCSI project by GIMONS.

I wonder how it compares feature wise and performance wise to [Wayback/Archive] BlueSCSI (which is Raspberry Pi Pico based, see [Wayback/Archive] index – BlueSCSI v2 Documentation, and now has a [Wayback/Archive] BlueSCSI Wi-Fi Desk Accessory – joshua stein which is open source at [Wayback/Archive] jcs/wifi_da – BlueSCSI Wi-Fi Desk Accessory for classic Mac OS – AmendHub and important to for instance [Wayback/Archive] Adding Wi-Fi to the Macintosh Portable – joshua stein).

Via [Wayback/Archive] The RaSCSI is MAGIC for Old Macs (and Much More!) – YouTube

More links:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Classic Macintosh, Development, Hardware Development, Hardware Interfacing, Macintosh SE/30, Power User, Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi Pico, Retrocomputing, RP2040, SCSI, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

“Documented” the import order of the common msbuild extension points. · Issue #2767 · dotnet/msbuild

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/08

As a start a comment some 5 years ago in [Wayback/Archive] Document the import order of the common msbuild extension points. · Issue #2767 · dotnet/msbuild, though informal, made this a lot more clear.

Via: [Wayback/Archive] Nick Craver on Twitter: “Possibly the single most useful issue comment I’ve ever come across: …”

--jeroen

Posted in .NET, Continuous Integration, Development, msbuild, Software Development | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Thread by @jpluimers on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/07

A while ago, I wrote two threads (one in English and one in Dutch) about using the Twitter Alt-badge to make pictures in tweets more accessible.

The English one had the correct quote, but a wrong link which I corrected below (we want editable tweets!).

Two bots that I mention in reply-Tweets usually helps to rudimentary restore the text:

@get_altText @AltTextUtil OCR

in the first Tweet and to the reply that @AltTextUtil gives, I respond with another

@get_altText

Here are the two threads:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in accessibility (a11y), Development, Power User, SocialMedia, Twitter, TwitterBot | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Online Delphi manuals

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/03

When you look at the History of Delphi (software) – Wikipedia, the real innovation – including Borland Kylix – was during the Early Borland Years fading later with three temporary surges, the first being the Delphi .NET support introduced in Delphi 7 and Delphi 8 happening too late during the Later Borland Years, then during the Embarcadero Years support for Unicode and Generics both in Delphi 2009 and followed by a the struggle of their cross platform compilers and (externally bought) FireMonkey vector-based GUI support independent from the Windows API in the XE series of Delphi versions. The Idera Years did not bring any real innovation: just minor updates presented as major ones.

This went hand-in hand with their then flagship relational database InterBase dwindling down after first open sourcing InterBase version 6 in 2000, then closed sourcing it again (sparking the Firebird database development ) with latest versions were years apart: 2020, 2017 and XE7.

This more or less stalled innovation means that older Delphi manuals and books stay relevant despite their physical copies having been long out of print, and made their way as PDF files on the internet.

So, for my link archive:

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Tribal Knowledge? Getting the public keys from github and gitlab users from their username

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/03

Learned a while ago: if you have the username from a GitHub or GitLab user, you can download interesting that sometimes can make life easier (but not necessarily more secure):

  • github.com/username.keys gives you their public SSH keys
  • gitlab.com/username.keys gives you their public SSH keys
  • github.com/username.png gives you their profile image

And that there are tools like gh, glab and age that can make direct use of them.

I love Twitter, so thanks for these for teaching me these little tricks:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ArchiveTeamWarrior, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, GitHub, GitLab, Internet, InternetArchive, OpenSSH, Power User, Software Development, Source Code Management, SSH, ssh/sshd, WayBack machine | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Installing Chocolatey on Windows 10 and up

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/02

Steps for installing Chocolatey on Windows 11 and up or 10 version 1803 and up.

Since I often install Windows on machines where it is not easy to copy/paste longer install commands my steps are slightly different than the ones on [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | Installing Chocolatey:

  1. Start a regular command prompt
  2. Either these two (the options are equivalent, see [Wayback/Archive] curl: transfer a URL | curl Commands | Man Pages | ManKier for --remote-name and -O):
    • curl --remote-name https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1
    • curl -O https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1

    Note the cURL pre-installed on Windows 10 since at least 6 years*: release 1803 or insider build 17063 is good enough to download the Chocolatey install script

  3. Inspect the downloaded install.ps1 to check if you spot anything you dislike
  4. Start an elevated (administrator) command prompt
  5. Start PowerShell
  6. Execute this command
    • Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
  7. Execute this command in the folder where you downloaded install.ps1
    • .\install.ps1
  • Yup, a custom build of cURL has been pre-installed on Windows 10 and up since more than 6 years:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Chocolatey, cURL, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »