Posted by jpluimers on 2020/10/09
I had to lough so loud when I bumped into this [WayBack] The alphabet, in alphabetical order, in various languages – The Old New Thing.
I got there because I wanted a few examples of languages having more than 26 ASCII letters in their alphabet.
Basically all non English languages (:
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2020/09/23
As of Delphi XE6, the VCL also styles non-VCL controls, but this truncates the texts to 256 characters, for instance in non-balloon hints. This is fixed in Delphi 10.2 Berlin, by making the buffer dynamic and switching obtaining those texts from using GetWindowText to sending a WM_GETTEXT message.
A fix for Delphi XE6..10.1 Berlin is at gitlab.com/wiert.me/public/delphi/DelphiVclStylesAndHintText, with many thanks to Stefan Glienke who based the patch on the ones used in Spring4D. I think they are similar to the ones in [Archive.is] VCL Fix Pack 1.4 | Andy’s Blog and Tools.
The Old New Thing explains the difference between GetWindowText and WM_GETTEXT in [WayBack] The secret life of GetWindowText – The Old New Thing. TL;DR:
GetWindowText strikes a compromise.
- If you are trying to GetWindowText() from a window in your own process, then GetWindowText() will send the WM_GETTEXT message.
- If you are trying to GetWindowText() from a window in another process, then GetWindowText() will use the string from the “special place” and not send a message.
So for your own process, it does not matter as GetWindowText uses WM_GETTEXT.
–jeroen
Related:
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Posted by jpluimers on 2020/09/16
A while ago, I had an error like this when debugging plugins:
Project bds.exe raised exception class EOSError with message ‘System Error. Code: 183.
Cannot create a file when that file already exists’.
It got was raised when [WayBack] GetLastError returned ERROR_ALREADY_EXIST which according to [WayBack] System Error Codes (0-499) (Windows) has this description:
ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS
- 183 (0xB7)
- Cannot create a file when that file already exists.
The last line is the same description that [WayBack] FormatMessage returns. And it put me on the wrong foot as it wasn’t a file, but a mutex that was created: indeed [WayBack] CreateMutex documents it:
If the mutex is a named mutex and the object existed before this function call, the return value is a handle to the existing object, GetLastError returns ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS, bInitialOwner is ignored, and the calling thread is not granted ownership. However, if the caller has limited access rights, the function will fail with ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED and the caller should use the OpenMutex function.
In the mean time, the plugin doesn’t raise that as an exception any more.
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2020/08/11
Old but useful: [WayBack] GitHub – blackrosezy/gui-inspect-tool: Gui Inspect tool for Windows, a collection of Windows UI inspection tools:
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2020/07/29
Just in case I need to explain this to someone, as it has been a long time ago I did this: [WayBack] windows – Is there a single UAC binary? – Super User.
Via: [WayBack] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers: Is there a UAC binary? – Google+
Most important reference: [WayBack] How User Account Control Works | Microsoft Docs
consent.exe
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2020/05/05
Interesting insights from [WayBack] Andreas Twitter: “I was joking about #Delphi’s splash screen to be shown later so Embt can claim that it finishes much faster now. Today my Internet was down and guess what I had to “witness”. Seattle: 22 sec splash screen time Tokyo: 2 sec splash screen time Sounds fantastic, but…… https://t.co/FGtnJQZDyc”:
- in earlier versions part of the copy protection (WinVerifyTrust calls) were done after the splash screen was visible and now they are done before.
- That the WinVerifyTrust call took so long was because Windows (not Delphi) wanted to check for revoked certificates in the first WinVerifyTrust call (due to the missing only-cache flag) and my router seems to not like it if the modem doesn’t have a connection/link to the provider
- consider using FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE so that if the IDE is killed during its start (debug session when you see that you forgot something and want to abort) doesn’t wait ~3 minutes or more until the lock is lifted
More relevant links based on the above:
Via [WayBack] Anyone else saw the video on this Andreas Hausladen post? – Cesar Romero – Google+ where I found this observation interesting:
My vm installs have zero net on by default, host only lan, lan only, and internet provided on demand. I’m noticing a lot of differences in the splash screens of 10.2.2.2.2, often lacking registration confirm info (making me nervous).
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2020/04/09
On my research list is [WayBack] GitHub – DareDevil73/bug-finder: Windows passive debugger. with an article at [WayBack] Bug Finder, A Real Win32 Extensible Passive Debugger – CodeProject:
The Bug Finder is a real Win32 debugger, entirely written in Borland Delphi, which analyzes your application execution flow, so you can:
- Catch exceptions on the main executable, external DLLs, primary and working threads.
- Produce a detailed stack trace about each exception.
- Place a symbolic breakpoint to get, in place of a program debug break, a full stack trace log message (dynamic tracing).
- Produce detailed and rotative log files for a batch application behaviour inspection.
- Capture output of
OutputDebugStringAPI to log file (to provide extra debugging information by yourself directly into your code).- Trace Process, Threads and DLLs activities.
I found documentation at [WayBack] DareDevil73 … docs, but the binary dependencies and installer are on SourceForge (where the project was originally located) and CodeProject which cannot be archived so I will look into that when it pops to the top of my research list.
–jeroen
via: [WayBack] Bug Finder by Antonio Petricca (in 2013?) Have any of you tried it? – Lars Fosdal – Google+
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Posted by jpluimers on 2020/03/25
Blast from the past machine generated code by the various assembly versions of the [WayBack] Windows BitBlt function [WayBack] Optimizing BitBlt by generating code on the fly – The Old New Thing.
Via: [WayBack] Rodrigo Ruz on Twitter: “Optimizing BitBlt by generating code on the fly https://t.co/gWmKjex20i”
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2020/03/24
Designing for a good user experience is hard, especially to programmers. So if you are a programmer, please read, let them sink in, rinse, repeat the below linked articles multiple times. Being ~15 years old, they are still so very relevant:
–jeroen
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Posted by jpluimers on 2020/02/27
Via [WayBack] What are the size restrictions for the VCL controls like TPanel and TPaintBox.? Are they documented anywhere? I’m talking about placing these on a TScro… – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+:
Some Windows messages use the LPARAM to carry width and height, which allows only 16 bit for each.
So 32k-1 (or decimal 32767) is the maximum size of a GDI based visual element in Windows.
–jeroen
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The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 