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

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Archive for the ‘Delphi 2006’ Category

Porting Delphi 2006 to XE2, fields versus properties: tightened compiler error E2197

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/03/19

When porting some communications code that used records as properties from Delphi 2006 to Delphi XE2, I came across a tightened compiler error “E2197 Constant object cannot be passed as var parameter“.

Let me first explain the good old occurrence of E2197 with some code that uses my last Variant Records example:

Just look at TPacket.InitializePacket and TPacketBase.InitializeFPacket: Basically even though the Packet property has storage specifiers indicating it directly reads from a field and directly writes to a field, you cannot pass it as a var parameter in the FillChar method.

Of course you can with a field, you can pass it to FillChar without trouble as TPacketBase.InitializeFPacket shows. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2006, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Software Development | 3 Comments »

Delphi “Variant Records”, a few notes

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/03/14

Variant Records are a feature that has been in the Pascal language since Standard Pascal.

A cool page for historic perspective is R3R: Pascal Features in Popular Compilers, hopefully someone will update it to more modern versions of the mentioned compilers.

There is not much official documentation on the Delphi side on this, so below some parts of a case I used for a project that started in 1997 and is still in use to day. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in APPC, AS/400 / iSeries / System i, ASCII, COBOL, Communications Development, Conference Topics, Conferences, CPI-C, Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Encoding, Event, HIS Host Integration Services, Internet protocol suite, MQ Message Queueing/Queuing, SNA, Software Development, TCP, Unicode, UTF-8, WebSphere MQ | 9 Comments »

When you automatically check “Automatically close on successful compile” and the compiler progress disappears…

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/03/13

Every once in a while I manage to check “Automatically close on successful compile” during compilation, the compiler progress disappears, and I loose my clue if compilation ended or not.

This is how to fix it:

  • find the registry portion of your Delphi version, under either of these
    – HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\BDS\#.0
    – HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CodeGear\BDS\#.0
    – HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\#.0
    Where #.0 is your version number from this Delphi Release Dates page.
  • Under the key “Compiling”, find the string value named “Auto Close Progress Dialog”  and change it from “True” to “False”

–jeroen

via: Embarcadero Newsgroup Archive :: embarcadero.public.delphi.ide :: Re: D2006 compiler progress.

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Software Development | 7 Comments »

Delphi “type types”: similar types but not the same type identity, some examples.

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/03/12

Few people know about a Delphi language feature that has been present since Delphi 1: prepending the type definition with a type keyword to make the type getting a new identity.

Each time I use it, I have to do some browsing for the consequences, and this time I wrote down some notes and created a small example program (source is also below).

This time I needed it when writing class wrappers on top of the Delphi bindings for WebSphere MQ.

WebSphere MQ has Queues where you can put and get messages. It also has Queue Managers to which you connect, and that provide queuing services and manages queues.

Both Queues and Queue Managers have names that can be up to 48 (single byte) characters long.
Those names mean totally different things, so though the have similar data types, they have a different identity.

The same holds for 20 byte character arrays (they can be used as names for ChannelNameShortConnectionName and MCAName). The 264 byte character array is so far used for ConnectionName only.

Distinguishing those types: That’s what “type types” in Delphi are all about. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in CP437/OEM 437/PC-8, Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Encoding, Shift JIS, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8 | 1 Comment »

Convenient when translating C header files: Delphi to C++ types mapping (Embarcadero docwiki)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/03/07

A while ago I was involved in a C header file translation for the header files of the IBM WebSphere MQ family of products, and the table helped a lot for the base types:

Delphi to C++ types mapping – RAD Studio.

A few C things missing there:

These articles helped resolving the missing bits:

Now we can do SOA between System i (a.k.a. iSeries, aka AS/400) from Windows 7.

–jeroen

PS: Later I found someone else also did a lot of work on this and published http://www.milosev.com/Download/WebSphere/WebSphereD2009.rar [WayBack] (thanks Murat Mutlu for pointing me at that) with a very thin note at http://www.milosev.com/32-mq/mq/171-delphi-2009.html [WayBack]

Posted in C++, C++ Builder, Delphi, Delphi 2006, Delphi XE2, Development, MQ Message Queueing/Queuing, Software Development, WebSphere MQ | Leave a Comment »

Please write dates and times so that everyone understands them, not just you. xkcd: ISO 8601

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/28

ISO 8601 was published on 06 05 88 and most recently amended on 12 01 04

ISO 8601 was published on 06 05 88 and most recently amended on 12 01 04

Boy, am I glad with the xkcd: ISO 8601 post and image on the right.

One reason:

Please write dates and times so that everyone understands them, not just you.

The alt-text of the comic is hilarious (ISO 8601 was published on 06 05 88 and most recently amended on 12 01 04) showing the confusion of using 2 digit years not knowing which field means which (I thin XKCD author Randall Munroe and Mathematics of the ISO calendar got some of the dates, see PDF search dates below).

I found out in the mid 1980s that people I was communicating with internationally (back then the internet was forming and you already had BITNET Relay chat and email) were using different date formats than I did.

Ever since that, I’ve used the YYYY-MM-DD format of writing dates, encouraging others to use as well and as soon as I found out that was a standard, started to evangelize ISO 8601 (there is an ISO 8601 category on my blog), which – at the time of writing this – had had revisions in 1998 (on 1998-06-15), 2000 (on 2000-12-15) and 2004 (on 2004-12-01).

A lot later I found out that back in 1971, this date format was a recommendation, and in 1976 already a standard. Not nearly as old as Esperanto though (:

Speaking about languages:

At the end of last century, after Delphi 5 added year 2000 support (which made the 16-bit Delphi 1 disappear from the box as the effort to prove the product including all libraries was year 2000 proof), Delphi went cross platform.

The Delphi team working on both Kylix 1 and Delphi 6, the also added a DateUtils unit which provides a lot of cuntionality, including support for weak numbers. The first test version always assumed week 1 was the one with januari first in it. As ISO 8601 also indicates how the first week of a year should be determined, a couple of people (Jeroen W. Pluimers, Glenn Crouch, Rune Moberg and  Ray Lischner) provided code that fixed this and a few other things in the unit. We even got mentioned by Cary Jensen!

That code is now also part of the RemObjects ShineOn library. That DateUtils unit is now on GitHub.
A Delphi XE version of the code (and a Delphi 2007 one) are now at NickDemoCode (Thanks Nick Hodges!).

Delphi is not the only environment having ISO 8601 support. XML has, .NET has, etc: it is now wide spread.
So follow your tools, and start using it yourself as well (:

Too bad the ISO 8601 standard text is not available publicly:

I remember the Y2K preparation era where the ISO-8601 standard was freely available at http://www.iso.ch/markete/8601.pdf, soon after the Year 2000, the PDF got locked behind a payment engine.
ISO suffers from heavy link rot too, for instance the ISO 3166 country codes used to be at http://www.iso.org/iso/prods-services/iso3166ma, but are now at http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/country_codes.htm. What about HTTP 303 or 302 redirect here guys?

Luckily people keep cached copies:

  1. “ISO 8601” “First edition” “1988-06-15” filetype:pdf
  2. “ISO 8601” “Second edition” “2000-12-15” filetype:pdf
  3. “ISO 8601” “Third edition” “2004-12-01” filetype:pdf

–jeroen

via: xkcd: ISO 8601.

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, ISO 8601, Power User, Prism, Software Development | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments »

Found a table with Delphi Conditional defines over the Delphi versions/compiler platforms/bitness

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/20

Right now, documentation on Delphi Conditional Defines is on pages like Conditional compilation (Delphi) – RAD Studio XE2, but it is limited as it is for one specific version of Delphi only.

However, over the course of Delphi versions, compiler platforms and bitness, and not forget Free Pascal and Turbo Pascal/Borland Pascal, the matrix has become huge.

There is no complete documentation on that in one place. Right now include files like Defines.inc, the DSPack.inc, the JCL include directory the JVCL common include directory and the Jedi.inc documentation contain the collective knowledge about this.

Someone should condense that in a table and – more important – keep it up to date.

At least now there is a post collecting some of the links that contain the knowledge (:

Found one that contains these columns

  • Product & Version
  • VERxxx defines
  • __BORLANDC__ value
  • RTLVersion
  • CompilerVersion
  • Package Version

via Compiler/RTL version overview « Muetze1 wich is now available on the wayback machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20131229055045/http://www.muetze1.de/?page_id=547

–jeroen

Posted in Borland Pascal, Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, FreePascal, History, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal | 14 Comments »

MonkeyStyler Blog: should be on DelphiFeeds too.

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/15

I mailed the DelphiFeeds people to add the MonkeyStyler Blog by Mike Sutton.

It is a nice Delphi related blog focussing on FireMonkey stuff.

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, FireMonkey, OS X FMX, Software Development | 4 Comments »

Allen Bauer on: delphi – What’s the difference between CreateWnd and CreateWindowHandle? (plus a bit of CreateParams)

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/02/06

One of the really nice contributions on StackOverflow by Allen Bauer is almost 3 years ago.

It is about these three Delphi VCL methods introduced by TWinControl to make control development easier:

The really cool thing is that this API has been stable since 1995, and still allows you to subclass windows controls or create your own controls in a very simple way.

Note that Allen does not cover DestroyWnd or DestroyWindowHandle, but those are just counterparts of CreateWnd and CreateWindowHandle.

In normal Delphi application code, you have less Destroy overrides than Create overrides, and the same holds for control development.

–jeroen

via: delphi – What’s the difference between CreateWnd and CreateWindowHandle? – Stack Overflow.

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi 8, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Software Development | 2 Comments »

Delphi: path names both in .dpr and .dproj, why? (refactoring – How to reorganize the folder structure of my units in Delphi? – Stack Overflow)

Posted by jpluimers on 2012/09/27

Cool: learned something new here:

About the path names of files being in the .dproj as well as in the .dpr:

@Jeroen – Looks like msbuild might need those entries, otherwise they’re possibly redundant, AFAICT… In any case, there is not much editing involved, just delete ‘dccreference’ entries and then a ‘save all’ in the IDE regenerates them. – Sertac Akyuz

–jeroen

via: refactoring – How to reorganize the folder structure of my units in Delphi? – Stack Overflow.

Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Development, Software Development | Tagged: , , , , , , | 14 Comments »