Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/13
Another pioneer in the IT passed away: at age 70, Dennis Ritchie (aka dmr), pioneer, creator of the C programming language and key developer of Unix died this weekend.
Within a week, two pioneering IT people went. Let’s remember them for what they were and wish the people left behind all the best.
–jeroen
Posted in About, Development, Opinions, Personal | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/13
If you have the Windows Server Resource Kit tools installed, then dsget and dsquery can get you some valuable information about the current user and computer.
Below is a sample batch file that shows that dsquery gets you [Wayback/Archive] DNs, and dsget gets you detailed information for a certain type of DN.
You can use pipes (and sometimes you need to [Wayback/Archive] escape the pipes) to pass information from dsquery to dsget.
dsget will happily accept multiple DNs (each on a new line), so you can use text-files with DNs too.
@echo on
:: this assumes that dsquery, dsget, etc are in the same directory as the batch file
::escape pipe with caret
for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%a in ('%~dp0dsquery user -samid %USERNAME% ^| %~dp0dsget user -desc ^| find /V "dsget succeeded"') do (
set description=%%a
)
::trim last two spaces
if "%description:~-2%"==" " set description=%description:~0,-2%
echo !%description%!
–jeroen
Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Scripting, Software Development | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/12
Last week, Xamarin released version 2.8 of the MonoDevelop development environment.
Biggest feature is xCode 4 support (which integrated the Interface Builder therefore broke MonoDevelop 2.6).
Since it is hard to run xCode 3 on Mac OS X Lion (Mac OS X Lion more than prefers xCode 4), and you need at least xCode 4.2 beta to develop for iOS 5, this welcome upgrade when you are staying current on Mac OS X.
You can use MonoDevelop to create .NET applications for:
Be sure to read the MonoDevelop 2.8 release notes, as even the list of Major Highlights is long:
–jeroen
via: MonoDevelop 2.8 is Here! « Xamarin.
Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Mono for Android, MonoTouch, Software Development, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/12
When running on Windows, changing the current user is called impersionation.
There are various ways to do this in Windows, including
On the iSeries, there is only one way, as everything goes through the same API: use QSYGETPH (Get Profile Handle) to verify a username/password combination and obtain a handle to the authentication token, then use QWTSETP (Set Profile Handle) to change the user currently signed on, as for instance mentioned by Colin Williams directing to the CHGCURUSR tool on FreeRpgTools.com and an article on Swapping AS/400 User Profiles by Shannon O’Donnel that comes with source code.
On the iSeries, when you are done, you should use QSYRLSPH (Release Profile Handle) when done impersonating, and you need to get the handle from the original user profile if you want to return to it.
The IBM documentation contains a small sample with QSYGETPH, QWTSETP and QSYSRLSPH that sets and restores the profile handle (edit 20120214: it got moved to http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r3/index.jsp?topic=%2Fapis%2Fapiexushand.htm)
Note that on both Windows ans iSeries, impersonation within a process/thread will make it run in the new context, but the process still keeps the identity of the user that started the process.
If you want to change that, then on both you need to start a new process from the impersonated thread.
In Windows, you can combine the impersionation and the creation of a new process by using the CreateProcessWithLogonW function (as mentioned at the Old New Thing by Raymond Chan). I’ve yet to find an equivalent on the iSeries.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, iSeries, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/11
EKON 15 – first day has many English sessions
From 26 till 28 of October, I’ll be speaking at the 15th EKON conference at the Renaissance Hotel in Düsseldorf, Germany.
I just sat next to the conference organizer, and he proudly announced that well known and long time Delphi guru Cary Jensen will be presenting the keynote on the evolution of Delphi from Delphi 1 to XE2.
I still have the disks marked “Wasabi” and “Mango” from the early 90s (and funny that Microsoft is using the same name for a 7.5 product, where Delphi 1 was a real revolution).
Next to the German sessions, there will be English sessions as well: Cary also does his other sessions that day (on cross platform development, windows services, and RESTful webservices).
Being a German conference, most of the other sessions will be in German, but it is good that the English ones are all in one day: you get a one-day visit to conference as a non-German speaker, get a discount and visit the beautiful city of Dusseldorf (especially the Altstadt is recommended).
Contact me for more information on discounts: there are both discounts for the English day and the full the whole conference.
On the EKON 15 site there is a nice conference planner and session overview.
Last but not least, on friday after the conference, Edwin van der Kraan and I will present a full day Delphi XE2 workshop covering x64, new VCL and of course FireMonkey cross platform development (so bring your Mac and iOS devices with you!).
15. EKON Konferenz – Delphi XE2 und mehr…
Vom 26. bis zum 28. Oktober findet die 15. Entwickler Konferenz (EKON) im Renaissance Hotel in Düsseldorf statt. Ich werde als Speaker ebenfalls vor Ort sein.
Als ich gerade mit dem Organisator der Konferenz zusammen saß, verkündete er mir stolz, dass Cary Jensen, bekannter und langjähriger Delphi-Guru, auf der EKON 15 eine Keynote zu Delphis Evolution von Delphi 1 zu XE2 halten wird.
Ich bin immer noch im Besitz von Disketten aus den frühen 90er Jahren, die mit „Wasabi“ und „Mango“ beschriftet sind (witzig dabei ist, dass Microsoft den gleichen Namen für ein 7.5-Produkt nutzt, während es bei Delphi 1.0 eine richtige Revolution gab).
Neben den deutschen Sessions werden auf der EKON auch Sessions auf English angeboten: Cary wird unter anderem auch über Cross-Plattform-Entwicklung, Windows Services und RESTful Web Services sprechen.
Zwar werden die meisten Sessions auf Deutsch gehalten, jedoch gibt es diesmal eine Besonderheit bei den englischen Sessions: Diese finden an einem Tag statt!
Somit können auch die Nicht-Deutschsprachigen für ermäßigten Eintritt an den Sessions auf Englisch teilnehmen und ganz nebenbei die schöne Innenstadt Düsseldorfs erkunden
(besonders die Altstadt ist sehr empfehlenswert).
Zu guter Letzt präsentieren Edwin van der Kraan und ich am Freitag einen ganztägigen XE2 Power Workshop zu x64, New VCL und natürlich zur FireMonkey Cross-Plattform-Entwicklung (bringen Sie also Ihre Macs und iOS-Geräte mit!).
Bei weiteren Fragen, Interesse und Infos über die Ermäßigungen können Sie mich gerne kontaktieren (Ermäßigte Preise gibt es sowohl für den English-Day als auch für die Gesamtkonferenz). Auf der Website finden Sie eine übersichtlichen Zeitplaner, die Sessions im Überblick und alle weiter Informationen zur Entwickler Konferenz.
–jeroen
Posted in About, Conferences, Delphi, Development, EKON, Event, Personal, Travel | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/11
Having done quite a bit of Windows CE development work in .NET, I totally support the below UserVoice request: re-add support for Windows CE in Visual Studio 2010.
Please vote both the underlying Microsoft connect request, and the uservoice entryif you support it too!
Bring back support for Smart Device Extensions
Microsoft caused outrage when without warning or explanation they dropped support for the Smart Device Extensions. Meaning that there is no support for both managed (Compact Framework) and unmanaged (C++) development for the Windows CE platform.
Microsoft promised support would be added by the time VS2010 was released but then back tracked, to date the official line is use VS2008. This product is nearly 4 years old, it is becoming increasingly more impractical to use VS2008 solely for the purpose of developing for the Windows CE platform. Many development teams invested heavily in the benefit of having a single UI for both embedded and desktop development, with the advent of the Compact Framework skill sets and more importantly the code base could easily be shared across platforms. This is now no longer true, as the desktop development/source control/build/test environments have moved on the embedded development environment is stuck in the past. This means duplication of code, duplication of effort and increased cost.
Anyone wanting to start developing for Windows CE has to first buy an MSDN subscription because you can no longer buy VS2008 retail.
As support for Smart Devices has been inherent in VS since VS2003 many people have been caught out when upgrading to VS2010, in many cases those who make their living in the embedded world are now stuck with no upgrade path. Microsoft has refused to comment or discuss the future of embedded development, this silence has forced many to look at alternative platforms.
One of the top voted suggestions on the Connect site was to restore Smart Device Extension support in VS2010, Microsoft has ignored this in typical fashion.
See the Connect Item.
–jeroen
via Bring back support for Smart Device Extensions – Customer Feedback for Microsoft.
Posted in .NET, .NET CF, Development, Mobile Development, Software Development, Windows CE | 3 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/11
Small but useful, especially in countries that have something else than a dot (.) as decimal digit separator (all of the green countries: probably more than you’d thought).
The C# sourcecode is really simple use a NumberFormatInfo instance (or an instance of another class implementing IFormatProvider) in a Single.ToString call:
float number = 3.1415;
NumberFormatInfo numberFormatInfo = new NumberFormatInfo();
numberFormatInfo.NumberDecimalSeparator = ".";
numberFormatInfo.NumberGroupSeparator = string.Empty;
string numberString = number.ToString(numberFormatInfo);
The classes implementing IFormatProvider are CultureInfo, DateTimeFormatInfo and NumberFormatInfo.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/07
The tzdb (Timezone Database) is an important database of current and historical timezone information.
Yesterday, it became clear that a civil suit was filed on September 30, 2011 by Astrolabe over parts of the historic data in the tzdb.
As a reasult, the tzdb download and mailing list has been shut down (already archived at the WayBack machine).
This might be speculative, but I find the coincidence with the plans of the IETF taking over the maintenance of the tzdb, as well as the sudden number of edits on the Wikipeda tzdb page before the suit was filed stunning (thanks Ghostworks for pointing me to the latter).
A lot of software depends on the tzdb (Unix, Linux, Mac, Windows, IBM, you name it). As soon as you have used a timezone like “Europe/Amsterdam”, you have likely used the tzdb in one form or the other.
Arthur David Olson and Paul Eggert most likekely need help, lets hope one of the big companies helps them.
–jeroen
PS: When I started writing this blog post, the tz database Wikipedia page didn’t mention the law suit, now it does. But given the frequent changes mentioned above, I’m not sure which information on that page is correct or incorrect.
via: Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database – Slashdot.
Posted in Development, Power User, Software Development | 3 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/07
A while ago, I found myself in the situation where at a corporate client the user profiles had moved on the LAN. Very understandable: it was one of the migrations towards DFS. They notified this in advance, so I made backups of everything (home drive and user profile) just to make sure.
The move indeed caused all sorts of havoc, because the data was moved, but the registry was only slightly modified.
Some of the errors I got were like these:
[Internet Explorer - Search Provider Default] A program on your computer has corrupted your default search provider setting for Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has reset this setting to your original search provider, Live Search (search.live.com). Internet Explorer will now open Search Settings, where you can change this setting or install more search providers. [OK]
and
[Desktop] \\old-server\old-share\user-id\Desktop refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the Internet or your network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location. [OK]
Below some of the ramblings on what I did to get everything working again, including registry searches when you are not allowed to run RegEdit, searching through text, and the places in the registry that had to change. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, C#, Delphi, Development, Encoding, Power User, Software Development, Unicode | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/10/06
Sometimes you are at clients that don’t fully appreciate the luxury of keeping their development environment current.
This case a client still using Delphi 2006, where I promptly ran into a compiler error that was solved 5 years ago: a “F2084 Internal Error: C11919” at the end of the method.
begin if RMQResult.Create(CompCode, Reason).IsOK then //... end; // [Pascal Fatal Error] MQObjects.pas(668): F2084 Internal Error: C11919
The cause is that the compiler barfs at calling a method on a freshly created record.
The function result is an intermediate, which is not handled correctly (fixed in Delphi 2007).
This is not only for record intermediates: reusing an intermediate like the result of Pred() will crash the compiler in Delphi 2006.
The workaround is introducing a real variable.
This works:
var MQResult: RMQResult; begin MQResult := RMQResult.Create(CompCode, Reason); if MQResult.IsOK then //... end; // compiles fine
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Development, F2084, Software Development | 4 Comments »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 