Archive for the ‘Delphi 6’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2018/07/11
When accessing the VCL from multiple threads at the same time: adopted from …\DEMOS\THREADS\THRDDEMO.DPR
Great question a while ago:
[WayBack] “Don’t access VCL from a background thread” – how to demo that? – Primož Gabrijelčič – Google+
For me, the ultimate way why not to access the VCL from a background thread is the precursor of the official threads demo that ships from Delphi 2 to Delphi XE6 in ...DEMOS\THREADS\THRDDEMO.DPR. where you’d think the thread isolation would be in ...DEMOS\THREADS\ThSort.pas but actually is in ...DEMOS\THREADS\SortThds.pas.
The first public showing of that demo did not include main thread protection. It originates from a session at the the 1995 Borland Developers Conference where Ray Konopka showed the below code from Bob Ainsbury.
That session reminded why this joke [WayBack] Via the EKON20 sessions… – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+ was so funny: “When Ray Konopka enters the room you have a Raize condition.“.
The question above also made me find back this reference to BorCon95 in San Diego:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 10.1 Berlin (BigBen), Delphi 10.2 Tokyo (Godzilla), Delphi 2, 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, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2018/04/05
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 10.1 Berlin (BigBen), Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2018/01/10
As a by-effect, this article seems to one of the few that shows where Delphi uses the .dres file extension introduced around Delphi XE.
Recently I had to play some notification sounds in a Windows Delphi application where the application deployment should be as easy as possible: preferable copying the EXE around.
Playing a sound file seems easy, especially if it is a [WayBack] WAV file: just use the [WayBack] PlaySound or the (older) [WayBack] sndPlaySound API functions.
But if you start searching on the internet, you see lots of curious implementations for playing WAV resources through sndPlaySound.
The actual implementation is really really easy though, just make sure you follow the steps right and nothing can go wrong.
[WayBack] The full source code is on my BeSharp.net repository, here is how to to it step by step:
The steps depend on the MMSystem unit, so most of the code translates back to [WayBack] Turbo Pascal for Windows (yes, the 16-bit Pascal days when the MMSystem unit was introduced) with the exception of the SND_SENTRY flag.
The thing that more recent Delphi versions made a lot easier is embedding WAV files as WAVE resources, more on that further on. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Borland Pascal, Delphi, Delphi 2, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Development, Pascal, Software Development, Turbo Pascal | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2017/07/04
Just in case I need any of them: now in chronological order.
MarcoDelphiBooks – http://www.marcocantu.com
Source: MarcoDelphiBooks
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/12/21
Some of the [Wayback] Ken Thompson – Wikiquote entries come from a great [Wayback] 1983 ACM Turing Award Acceptance Lecture [Wayback] “Reflections on Trusting Trust”.
That lecture used to be on http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
But it isn’t, and was not in the WayBack machine and neither in the Google Cache [Archive.is] because of the [Wayback/Archive.is] robots.txt. Historic link rot galore!
Edit 20210728: by now it is in the Wayback machine again; the earliest archived copy is from 2001, it also shows that as of april 2015 it is gone from the bell labs server.
The lecture is about [Wayback] compiler viruses and viruses actually did this at least a few times: Wayback: Delphi in 2009 and to [Wayback] XCode in 2015.
A few nice links from [Wayback] ACM Classic: Reflections on Trusting Trust – Google Groups though:
And archived versions of (I hope accurate) copies of the article:
Finally I found a PDF copy of the original ACM prints that Greg Ganger of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University has online. It’s archived too.
–jeroen
Further reading:
Posted in *nix, Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Development, Event, Fun, Internet, link rot, Power User, Quotes, Software Development, T-Shirt quotes, WWW - the World Wide Web of information, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/11/29
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).
In my own experience, this isn’t the case for all Delphi versions, but I forgot which versions suffer and which don’t. I think the IDE theming issue omitting the Application word in the .dpr is related.
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.
–jeroen
Source: The curse of the Project.res file…
Some related posts:
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 1, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | 5 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/10/27
Only Delphi 6 and 7 used DDP files (still a nice concept: diagrams to help understanding your DFM files)
A long time ago, I wrote a stackoverflow answer and later a blog post on how to find and get rid of empty DDP files as both Delphi versions had the habit of creating them:
The blog post was when I helped moving an ancient Delphi project to a more modern Delphi version (due to some personal stuff going on I never finished it) and I never used such old Delphi stuff again.
This week that answer got quite a bunch of upvotes on the stakcoverflow answer which means people are still using Delphi 6 and 7 based code. Who’d ever thought that 15 year old versions would still be used today?
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Development, Software Development | 9 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/31
A while ago, I noticed the UCL as a suffix in a few 3rd party Delphi package names.
It was from a version close to the very first FireMonkey release. FireMonkey is based on the OpenGL based VGScene (and in part DirectX based [WayBack] DXScene) which was bought form KSDev in 2011.
Contrary to VGScene and DXScene, the early versions of FireMonkey were buggy and when updating to a new version you had to cope with a lot of breaking interface changes. In Delphi XE2 for instance, there were two totally different implementations (FMX for Windows and OS X; FMI for iOS) that merged after Delphi XE3.
Around Delphi XE6 it became more stable and now – apart from some design issues I wish they had done differently – it is coming along sort of OK for Windows and for cross-platform development.
Compared to the VCL you have a lot less HiDPI issues but the designer is much more layered (which gives you the same design-time pain as WPF) and the default “Live Binding” is still buggy as hell (though if you use something like MVVM or roll your own UI bindings it becomes bearable).
A long time ago – during the Kylix era – Borland developed the cross-platform CLX library which – for the UI part – was based on Qt and ran on both Windows and Linux.
It looks like before the KSDev take over there seemed to be a UCL (would that have been for Universal Component Library or Universal Control Library?) as the name pops up in quite a few package names.
Browsing through the source code I could not find any hints so I really wonder what UCL was about. Was it again based on Qt (which compared to the Kylix era has become much more mature and has widespread use) or a different technology like LCL (given that in Delphi XE2 they used FreePascal to compile for iOS)? I rule out OpenGL as otherwise the VGScene acquisition would have been done a lot earlier.
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 10.1 Berlin (BigBen), Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, FireMonkey, Kylix, OS X FMX, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/25
Delphi Component/Tool vendors have to support a truckload of Delphi and C++ Builder versions which can be a pain: they have to work around problems in Delphi and C++ Builder versions that have long been abandoned by Borland/CodeGear/Embarcadero/Idera/…
This means that sometimes the Delphi Component/Tool vendors have to work around stuff in a way normal applications vendors would never do.
Recently I learned that sometimes this can be a painful thing: keeping DFM files in binary state.
I’m not kidding about either the DFM file format nor about supporting old versions:
- Delphi has supported text based DFM files since like Delphi 2 for most of the features (yes, ‘most’ is the crucial word here) and by default stored DFM files in text format since Delphi 5.
- For the Component/Tool Vendors, even Delphi 7 makes money though usually less than Delphi 2007 or the C++ Builder side of things.
The ‘most’ applies to this nice ARM compiler bug in Delphi 19.0.13856.4978 (for mere mortals, that’s Update 1 for RAD Studio XE5, Delphi XE5 and C++Builder XE5; I wish vendors would list those numbers/products in a central place):
- [Android] MsBuild (dccAarm) error when compile FireMonkeyMobile projects with fmx forms
- Project: Delphi
- Build #: 19.0.13856.4978
Source: [WayBack] QualityCentral
That’s why TeeChart still has most DFM files stored as binary files (again the ‘most’ word).
For version control and searching this is a pain, so normal application developers (the ones not using Delphi XE5 Update 1 for Android work) should run convert.exe with the -t (target=text) switch on DFM binary files.
Oh: this is fixed in version 19.0.13856.4978 (yes, that’s XE5 Update 2).
–jeroen
Via:
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 10.1 Berlin (BigBen), Delphi 2, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 3, Delphi 4, Delphi 5, Delphi 6, Delphi 7, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Kylix, QC, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 