Archive for the ‘Delphi 7’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2020/06/17
From a long time ago: [WayBack] chr equivalent for Unicode in Delphi 7 – Stack Overflow answered by David Heffernan:
Q
I need to initialize a Widestring in Delphi 7 but I can’t use chrfunction which is ANSI
var
ws : Widestring;
begin
ws := chr($FFFF) + chr($FFFF) + chr($FFFF);
end;
What can I use, then ?
A
I’m not sure there’s a simply way to do what you wish. You can convert a Word into a WideChar with a simple cast:
WideChar($FFFF)
but you cannot concatenate WideChar. So this is a compiler error:
WideChar($FFFF) + WideChar($FFFF)
You could use a helper function to get the job done:
function InitialiseWideString(const chars: array of Word): WideString;
var
i: Integer;
begin
SetLength(Result, Length(chars));
for i := 0 to high(chars) do
Result[i+1] := WideChar(chars[i]);
end;
Then you can call it like this:
ws := InitialiseWideString([$0054, $0069, $006D, $0065, $0020, $0074, $006F,
$0020, $0075, $0070, $0067, $0072, $0061, $0064, $0065]);
–jeroen
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 7, Development, History, Software Development | 3 Comments »
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:
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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 2017/09/25
At the end of April 2014, Roman Yankovsky started a nice [Wayback] discussion on Google+ trying to get upvotes for [Wayback] QualityCentral Report #: 124402: Compiler bug when comparing chars.
His report basically comes down to that when using Ansi character literals like #255, the compiler treats them as single-byte encoded characters in the current code page of your Windows context, translates them to Unicode, then processes them.
The QC report has been dismissed as “Test Case Error” (within 15 minutes of stating “need more info”) by one of the compiler engineers, directing to the [Wayback] UsingCharacterLiterals section of Delphi in a Unicode World Part III: Unicodifying Your Code where – heaven forbid – they suggest to replace #128 with the Euro-Sign literal.
I disagree, as the issue happens without any hint or warning whatsoever, and causes code that compiles fine in Delphi <= 2007 to fail in subtle ways on Delphi >= 2009.
The compiler should issue a hint or warning when you potentially can screw up. It doesn’t. Not here.
Quite a few knowledgeable Delphi people got involved in the discussion:
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Posted in Ansi, ASCII, Conference Topics, Conferences, CP437/OEM 437/PC-8, Delphi, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Development, Encoding, Event, ISO-8859, Missed Schedule, QC, SocialMedia, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, Windows-1252, WordPress | 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 2017/01/10
A few weeks ago in When you get “TfsScript.Execute” throwing a “Unregistered version of FastScript.” I wrote about “a process that explains any modules in the MAP file not resulting in DCU files”.
The below batch file aids in that process.
It takes a MAP file from your Delphi compiled executable that has debug information in text format which means you need to set your project linker options to generate detailed MAP files.
The Map Debug File (*.map) – RAD Studio documentation hasn’t much information but points to Detailed-Segments Map File – RAD Studio which has a bit more. Neither contain information on Delphi units as they focus too much on the C++ side of things. Then there is a tiny bit information in Understanding Delphi MAP File – Stack Overflow.
So I did some spelunking and came up with this batch-file which will likely work back until about the Delphi 7 era:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | 1 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 2016/12/01
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 7, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development, Uncategorized | 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 »