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.
I wrote a two earlier blog posts around puns in programming book indices before:
the 1992 Turbo Pascal 7.0 Language Guide having both entry in the manual about Recursion (“recursive loop, see recursive loop”) which of course is similar to “infinite loop” and entries for “infinite loop See loop, infinite” and “loop, infinite See infinite loop”.
In the last one, I promised to list more occurrences which I now finally had time for to do.
But let me first elaborate more on the observation that modern computer books (like for instance on C# and Delphi beyond version 1) lack these kinds of index pun.
On the Delphi side, the index entry joke for recursion got removed no later than Delphi 3 (I am still looking for a Delphi 2 version of the Object Pascal Language Guide, see further below) even before the book being fully redone electronically and the index pages generation being automated in
I think I even understand why that is: the process of creating of indices. By the start of this century, more and more indices were automatically being generated and for the last 2 decades or so, all of them are. Back in the days however, indices were mostly done by hand. Nowadays, with everything automated, it is actually pretty tricky in most environments to add such an “infinite loop” index entry like in the Turbo Pascal book, as it would require two things at once:
A long time ago, Lars Fosdal wrote this on the Delphi G+ group:
It really is beyond me why there is no Project.rc file which includes
Project.version.rc
Project.icon.rc
Project.themes.rc
Project.manifest.xml
and so forth.
That way, the .res file would be a compile-time thing (or even a thing of the past) – and the resource linker would assemble the various bits from their individual sources.
It has been an issue forever. Vincent Parrett correctly commented that if you clean out too much out of the Project.res file, the IDE gets confused:
The only thing it is used for is version info and the mainicon (the IDE gets confused if don’t do that).
Like many of the G+ commenters, I’ve switched to script based resources for my own projects a long time ago. That’s also the reason why I forgot: this approach just works for any Delphi version.
This post is a reminder to self to see if the IDE has finally refrained from doing Project.res handling itself.
The last is by Dave Robinson, then working at Amber Computer Systems Inc, but I could not find on-line activity of him If you know him, please let me know his on-line contact info.
Normal people would give Valentine presents today.
But 20 years ago, Borland thought it was a nice idea to release Delphi. Then a revolutionary new tool and lots of scepticism. Now – after 20 years – still going strong, despite all kinds of funny things that management at Borland, InPrise, etc did and the wild ride the market had.
Back then, the argument was that the designer needed to be restructured to do that. Now that it has – to accommodate FMX – and it is time, especially for the vast majority of Delphi users primarily using the designers to get work done.
So my wish, after 20+ years of Delphi use:
Please bring multi-level undo/redo functionality in the Delphi designer (form, datamodule, etc).
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The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 