Now that you’re 21, have a glass of wine and watch this great presentation by Warren Postma which he made for last years birthday:
–jeroen
Archive for the ‘Delphi XE6’ Category
Happy birthday Delphi, have some wine
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/02/14
Posted in Delphi, Delphi 1, 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 | Leave a Comment »
Windows Vista/7/8/… hangs for Windows Common dialogs when your COM initialisation is wrong
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/02/03
A while ago I bumped into this: As of Windows 7 (and probably Vista), the standard Windows Common Item (Open and Save) Dialogs expect the main thread to be initialised with STA because it is easier to support apartment threading in single-threaded apartments because COM provides synchronization on a per-call basis and the Windows GUI APIs are not guaranteed to be thread safe.
Windows XP and Server 2003 didn’t enforce this for the classic Windows Open and Save Dialogs, so it only appeared when the software below got run on Windows 7 in a way too late time frame (but the market share of XP is still high).
The reason is that when using Delphi, the TOpenDialog and TSaveDialog will use the classic Open and Save Dialogs on Windows < Vista and fall-forward to the new Common Item Dialogs handled by TFileOpenDialog and TFileSaveDialog (both will not fall backward).
When you have your COM initialisation done wrong, your application appears to hang. Amidst the plethora of threads started by the COM subsystem, these two dead-lock:
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Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »
The forks of SynEdit (in case I need it in Unicode)
Posted by jpluimers on 2016/01/19
Just in case I need SynEdit in Unicode:
Old SVN versions are at
Newer Github repositories are at
The finaly one has a Demos folder and links to the original ANSI version. It seems the only version for which SynGen works in Unicode Delphi versions.
–jeroen
via Missed link? Anyone know what happens there? :) Once again: 1.SynEdit? ….
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Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Some links on DUnit test cases and test suites, XML and XSD
Posted by jpluimers on 2015/12/17
DUnit registration can mix TestSuites and TestCases.
Some links:
- JUnit XML format specification (DTD, XSD..) for Unit Test Reports – Stack Overflow.
- XSD for the XML file that NUnit uses – Stack Overflow.
- DUnit: Xtreme Unit Testing for Delphi / Mailing Lists: RE: [DUnit-interest] repeating test cases with different test setups
- DUnit: Xtreme Unit Testing for Delphi / Mailing Lists: RE: [DUnit-interest] repeating test cases with different test setups
- A DUnit Folder Iterator Extension | The Art of Delphi Programming.
- Are you using DUnit to test your Delphi applications? | Steve Trefethen.
- Delphi unit testing tool to introduce Dunit – Tutorials to .com.
- unit testing – delphi form to call many functions – Stack Overflow.
–jeroen
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Posted in Agile, Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, 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, Unit Testing | Leave a Comment »
The curse of nested DataSet fields in ClientDataSets: naming conventions
Posted by jpluimers on 2015/12/03
Nested DataSet fields assume identical naming of fields and parameters as Richard Stevens did comment in So I’m in total n00b mode here. I’m trying to set up a master/detail….
Of course the documentation for that is easy to find. Not.
Even this article by Cary Jensen doesn’t reveal the issue: Nesting DataSets in ClientDataSets.
So thanks Richard for clearing that up!
–jeroen
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Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2007, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Undocumented Delphi record alignment directive – Chee Wee’s blog: IT solutions for Singapore and companies worldwide
Posted by jpluimers on 2015/12/02
Reading a thread with ramblings on failing to understand that packed records overrides the $ALING directive, I found out that there is also an Undocumented Delphi record alignment directive – Chee Wee’s blog: IT solutions for Singapore and companies worldwide.
David Heffernan mentioned some nice permutations in the first thread.Chee Wee Chua “documents” the second. Both provide great reference material.
Note that both directive require a const expressions evaluating to a power of two. If you don’t, you get the same error: E2573 Illegal value for the ALIGN directive (valid for one of 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16) (Delphi) – RAD Studio
–jeroen
via:
- Undocumented Delphi record alignment directive – Chee Wee’s blog: IT solutions for Singapore and companies worldwide
- Align fields (Delphi) – RAD Studio.
- Internal Data Formats – Record Types (Delphi) – RAD Studio.
- Source: Structured Types – Alignment (Delphi) – RAD Studio
- E2006 PACKED not allowed here (Delphi) – RAD Studio.
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Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »
Interesting use of an IDE plugin: Copy a string from a “Watch” entry to the…
Posted by jpluimers on 2015/12/01
On the todo list:
Interesting use of an IDE plugin: Copy a string from a “Watch” entry to the clipboard without quotes. – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+
Source: delphi – Can I change the display format for strings in the watch list? – Stack Overflow:
Every now and then I use the watch window to display strings which contain sql statements.Now I select Copy Value from the context menu and get
'SELECT NAME FROM SAMPLE_TABLE WHERE FIRST_NAME = ''George'''#$D#$Abut want
SELECT NAME FROM SAMPLE_TABLE WHERE FIRST_NAME = 'George'
The answer by MartynA has an OTA plugin that could be integrated with something like GExperts.
–jeroen
via: Interesting use of an IDE plugin: Copy a string from a “Watch” entry to the clipboard…
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Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi 7, Delphi x64, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Ensure you know the state of an instance.
Posted by jpluimers on 2015/11/24
A while ago, I came across a class having (among other members) two methods named like this:
- Start
- Stop
Within one of the other members of the class, I had to (temporarily) Stop processing, then Start it again.
But I couldn’t, as neither Start, nor Stop would make a record of the state it left the instance in.
Always ensure you know the state of an instance.
So I added the state, and tests to ensure a Stop/Start change was indeed not breaking things.
–jeroen
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Posted in .NET, .NET 1.x, .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, C# 6 (Roslyn), Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | 1 Comment »
Do not expose properties with writeable fields without a chance to react on the writes.
Posted by jpluimers on 2015/11/04
From a chat with a co-worker a while ago:
So even if you expose such a property as read-only, it can still get its writeable fields overwritten.
That is a pain when those are part of the state of the underlying object.
In other words: encapsulate your state changes.
Here we solved it by making
- the type of the property immutable
- the property writeable
- react on state changes during the write
Proper encapsulation.
In this case it was a project mixing C# and Delphi, but you can easily apply the above to any language featuring classes and properties.
Another solution would have been to extend the type of the property so it can expose an event that fires during change. Much more convoluted.
–jeroen
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Posted in .NET, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, C# 6 (Roslyn), Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »
Please review your DFM files before you commit to version control
Posted by jpluimers on 2015/10/22
Recently I bumped into it again with one of the more current Delphi XE* versions and Delphi 2007: the IDE changing the DFM files without reason.
This time it was in a multi-team environment with many branches and DFM merge hell.
A few examples of properties and components getting changes:
- The Explicit* properties on components not using either Align or Anchors (unlike the article from JED Software: D2006: What on earth are these Explicit* properties in my DFM suggests), often compound components like TabSheet, most often with useless documentation and these values:
- ExplicitLeft = 0
- ExplicitTop = 0
- ExplicitWidth = 0
- ExplicitHeight = 0
- TImageList property Bitmap.
Warren P suggests to review your DFM changes before committing to version control and I completely agree: it is the only way to ensure they are indeed unwanted changes.
There are some stop-gab things you could try, but these only partially help
- Eric Grange uses a Resource based ImageList with design time editors. I wish that was open source, and I’m not alone on this (:
- André Mussche suggests to use DDevExtensions to switch of saving Explicit* properties but that kills all of them, including the ones you need.
–jeroen
via:
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Posted in Delphi, Delphi 10 Seattle, Delphi 2005, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, Delphi XE3, Delphi XE4, Delphi XE5, Delphi XE6, Delphi XE7, Delphi XE8, Development, QC, Software Development | 7 Comments »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 