The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

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

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Archive for the ‘Software Development’ Category

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Just found out about the SysUtils.FindCmdLineSwitch Function

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/17

I learn new things every day. So today I learned about [WayBack] SysUtils.FindCmdLineSwitch Function, which was introduced in Delphi 4, but I was still messing with ParamCount/ParamStr loops.

It as not changed over time. The above docs are Delphi 2007, and these are some of the newer:

–jeroen

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Debugging RTL/VCL Code with CodeSite – Dave’s Development Blog

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/17

This is so cool! [WayBack] Debugging RTL/VCL Code with CodeSite – Dave’s Development Blog.

It comes down to performing CodeSite.Send(...) calls as evaluation expressions in non-breaking breakpoints.

Ensure you have the CodeSite.Logging unit in your uses lists and you’re good to go.

Thanks David for pointing me to this!

This is even more useful than the breakpoint Log Message itself (which is only a string) or plain Eval Expression (which puts just one item into the Delphi event log) despite them being there since Delphi <= 5:[WayBack] Debugging code in Delphi XE – Stack Overflow.

–jeroen

via: [WayBack] Debugging RTL/VCL Code with CodeSite – David Hoyle – Google+

 

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 2 Comments »

Delphi annoyance: in debug mode, no breakpoints are being adhered to, no blue bullets

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/16

For all Delphi Galileo versions (the BDS based Delphi versions: 8 until now), I have bumped into this annoyance:

Over time, while working on an application, running it in DEBUG mode in the debugger, wil not fire any breakpoints and all blue bullets (meaning the lines have code generated) are gone.

There are no warnings or (error) dialogs leading to this situation.

The only remedy is to quit Delphi, start it again, then do a full rebuild of the application.

Of course this happens more often with large applications than with small ones.

Is there anyone who has a reliable method to:

  • signal this before it happens
  • workaround it in a better way

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | 1 Comment »

Lesson learned: do not copy/paste code from the `Visual` WordPress.com editor…

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/16

[WayBack] Lesson learned: do not copy/paste code from the Visual WordPress.com editor; copy from the Text editor or the Preview… – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+.

Note: likely the HTML below got rendered badly by WordPress.com, so the gist below has the same text as a MarkDown file.

Ever wonder why copy-pasting code from your WordPress.com post fails?

The first statement fails, but the second works:

[root@linux:/etc] # useradd --create-home --shell /bin/false autossh24
useradd: unrecognized option '--shell /bin/false'
...
[root@linux:/etc] # useradd --create-home --shell /bin/false autossh24
[root@linux:/etc] #

The reason is that the first is copied from the Visual WordPress.com editor that renders this HTML inserting &nbsp; which is a different unicode characer (0x00A0) than a normal space (0x0020):

<blockquote><p><code data-mce-selected="1"># <strong>useradd --create-home --shell&nbsp;/bin/false autossh24</strong></code></p></blockquote>

However, the the second copied from the Text WordPress.com editor succeeds because it has all regular spaces:

<blockquote><code># <strong>useradd --create-home --shell /bin/false autossh24</strong></code></blockquote>

Luckily the Preview render is correct:

<blockquote><p><code># <strong>useradd --create-home --shell /bin/false autossh24</strong></code></p></blockquote>

Lesson learned: do not copy/paste code from the Visual WordPress.com editor; copy from the Text editor or the Preview.

–jeroen

[WayBack] Ever wonder why copy-pasting code from your WordPress.com post fails?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, PHP, Scripting, SocialMedia, Software Development, Web Development, WordPress, WordPress | Leave a Comment »

delphi – IfThen(Assigned(Widget), Widget.Description, ‘No Widget’) doesn’t crash. Should it? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/16

Very interesting question [WayBack] delphi – IfThen(Assigned(Widget), Widget.Description, ‘No Widget’) doesn’t crash. Should it? – Stack Overflow.

Three important things here:

  • depending on inlining and kind of arguments, function calls can evaluate their arguments one or multiple times
  • lacking formal language specification, you never know if a method will be inlined or not
  • function calls should not have side effects

Via another interesting discussion at [WayBack] Inline functions are not guaranteed to evaluate their arguments exactly once… – David Heffernan – Google+

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

mail-filters/Makefile at master · fumiyas/mail-filters

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/15

Cool tool if you use Postfix: mail-filters/Makefile at master · fumiyas/mail-filters.

You set it up like this:

cd /etc/postfix
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fumiyas/mail-filters/master/postfix/Makefile

Then each time you change your postfix configuration:

cd /etc/postfix
make

In that directory, it will (re)generate a Makefile.postmapbased on the lines with hash in main.cf, then make each .db file from the source hash file.

After that you have to manually restart postfix, which depends on your Linux flavour.

Similar solutions:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Development, Makefile, postfix, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

AlessandroZ/LaZagne: Credentials recovery project

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/15

Just when I thought I made a note of a password I hardly ever use, I didn’t, luckily this open source tools understands how to recover many kinds of passwords: AlessandroZ/LaZagne: Credentials recovery project.

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Chrome, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Firefox, git, Internet Explorer, Office, Opera, Outlook, Power User, Python, Scripting, Skype, Software Development, Source Code Management, Web Browsers, WiFi, Windows | Leave a Comment »

git – How to read last commit comment? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/12

For only the latest commit message:

git log -1 --pretty=%B

For the full commit without diff:

git log -1

For the full commit including diff:

git show

Via: [WayBack] Often during a commit … I wish to read my last comment to remember what progress I have made (thanks Charles-Bailey!)

–jeroen

Posted in Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, git, Software Development, Source Code Management | Leave a Comment »

including enumerations and JPEG compression examples for wPDF 4 Manual: Compression related properties

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/11

Since I was tracking down an issue having to to with generating DIB in a compressed PDF: [Archive.is] wPDF 4 Manual: Compression related properties

Property CompressStreamMethod

By modifying this property you can let the PDF engine compress (deflate) text. By using compression the file will be reasonable smaller. On the other had compression will create binary data rather than ASCII data. While “deflate” produces the smallest files, “run-length” compression is compatible even to very old PDF reader programs.

Property JPEGQuality

wPDF can compress bitmaps using JPEG. This will work only for true color bitmaps (24 bits/pixel) and if you have set the desired quality in this property.

Property EncodeStreamMethod

If data in the PDF file is binary it can be encoded to be ASCII again. Binary data can be either compressed text or graphics. You can select HEX encoding or ASCII95 which is more effective then HEX.

Property ConvertJPEGData

Note: Only applies to TWPDFExport.

If this property is true JPEG data found in the TWPRichText editor will not be embedded as JPEG data. Instead the bitmap will be compressed using deflate or run length compression. It is necessary to set this property to TRUE if the PDF files must be compatible to older PDF reader programs which are incapable to read JPEG data.

Note that EncodeStreamMethod does not do compression, but it does belong here because the encodings result in different PDF sizes.

The settings are not documented in more detail, so here are the enumerations explaining them in a bit more depth:

–jeroen

Posted in ASCII95, Delphi, Development, Encoding, HEX encoding, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Delphi Code Monkey: Cool Advanced Troubleshooting Technique – WinDbg

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/11

This so much reminds me of a struggle in the Toshiba Tecra 750CDT era: [WayBack] Delphi Code Monkey: Cool Advanced Troubleshooting Technique – WinDbg.

First about Warren’s issue:

His laptop froze only in Windows 10, but not Windows 7, after doing some debugging work. Display is on, but non-responsive. He ruled out a lot of things, thought it was a video issue, looked for pointers how to research it ending to force memory dumps by keyboard then running WinDbg to further pinpoint the cause.

He solved the issue by removing the Lenovo supplied Intel graphics driver and forcing the Intel HD Graphics 520 OEM drivers onto the system and posted a few interesting links:

Then some history:

Back in the 750CDT days, the problem was the combination of Toshiba using OEM S3 Virge/MX video drivers, Windows GDI and TImageList with a lot of images in them (basically: the component palette).

Result: interrupt freeze of the laptop, so not even mouse or keyword would work.

Solutions:

  • use Windows NT, not Windows 95
  • disable all S3 hardware acceleration
  • use the Toshiba 780 series video drivers

From then on, I’ve never developed on Windows 9x based systems any more, but Windows NT based systems (even though it was much harder to get drivers for all hardware components), this despite the fact that with Windows NT 4, Microsoft video drivers from ring 3 to ring 0 (they were at ring 3 until and including Windows NT 3.51 [Archive.is]). On the one hand the move to ring 0 caused more blue screens, on the other hand made it a lot harder to directly access hardware from user software running at ring 3.

 

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »

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