marcocantu.blog

Getting Rid of Description Pane in Delphi 2010

2009-11-10T19:16:32.402Z

There is a "feature" of Delphi 2010 that I don't stand, the new Description Pane of the Object Inspector. Don't take me wrong, I'm impressed by the improvements of the product and haven't even opened Delphi 2009 in a few months now. There are many improvements and I really recommend moving to Delphi 2010. But there are also a few things I don't like (but I do have a fix, though).

This is a small area at the bottom of the Object Inspector offering a description of the selected property (like it happens in Visual Studio, I guess). However, there is no description ever displayed, only an empty area with the property name repeated, like you can see at the bottom of the Object Inspector for the Caption property of TButton:

You might start looking for a way to get rid of it. There is no option. Nothing to right click. Nothing in the detailed Options page of the Object Inspector. What about making is smaller by dragging the slider at the top? YOucan end up with only half a line. Better, but quite ugly:

The solution? There might be a hidden registry setting or something, I ended up writing some code in a design time package to locate the Object Inspector (which is the form called 'TPropertyInspector'), select its 'DescriptionPane' component, and forcing its height to 0. The effect is the pane is now totally gone:

Out of the dozens of great new features in Delphi 2010 (many of which I mentioned in this blog and other have covered in details) this one is rather annoying. It is another half-done help mechanism, much like Help Insight. We badly need improved help in Delphi, not only by having complete help files (I still keep my fingers crossed for those), but providing better integration with the IDE. This Description pane and the Help Insight are tools going in the right direction. Too bad that comments in the new areas of DataSnap and dbExpress don't follow Help Insight own conventions as they started doing in Delphi 2007. At times I think this side of Delphi is somewhat helpless... but still hope to be proved wrong.

In any case, getting back to the main topic of this blog post, if you use Delphi 2010 and want to get rid of the Description pane you can add to a design time package the unit available as NoInspectorDescriptionPane.pas.

Call for Unicode Migration Stories (by Cary Jensen)

2009-11-05T19:07:49.118Z

As he blogged on http://caryjensen.blogspot.com/2009/10/share-your-unicode-migration-story.html, my friend Cary Jensen is looking for experiences in migrating Delphi projects to Unicode. He is looking for "real-life stories from developers".

The deadline for submitting ideas and material is November 27, but the sooner the better. You can email your contribution to Tim Del Chiaro at Tim.DelChiaro@embarcadero.com or submit them using the Get Published interface at the Embarcadero Developer Network (EDN). More details are in Cary's blog post.

This would be a very nice way to help the community at large in learning from experience how to migrate applications to Delphi 2009 and 2010. The material will be edited and organized, so don't worry about writing perfect English or giving out many details, even a rough skeleton with code samples will probably do.

I migrated most of the programs quite smoothly, with some extra hassle in my web servers code. The piece of code I probably had to change more often was file reading and writing code, based on streams, like:

stream.Read (strData[1], length (strData));

Good that I could move to the new (in Delphi 2009) TTextReader and TTextWriter classes, which are also much nicer to use. Anyway, I'll look for more migration issues and send them to Cary. Hope you'll contribute as well, as this can really become a community-driven effort.

PS. Meanwhile, my REST white paper (focused on Delphi 2010) is almost done and will become available in the coming days. Stay tuned as usual.

Delphi Application Showcase

2009-11-03T10:54:11.255Z

Embarcadero has set up an official Delphi Application Showcase, at http://www.embarcadero.com/application-showcase. The idea is quite interesting and even if there were already similar lists around, having an official one by Embarcadero (and having the company use the Delphi community for marketing the product) is quite nice.

The user interface is nice, even if not very intuitive (how do you move to the next element? is there a way to get the complete list? I think no), and it is even nicer it was implemented with Javascript (using the scriptaculous library) while at first sight it might as well seem a Flash page. When will we have a Javascript IDE from Embarcadero? But I'm digressing...

Make sure you send them information about your applications written in Delphi (and other Embarcadero languages), at http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/39930.

Ironically, I just proposed a similar project to the European marketing, and it was not accepted as this was already in the works. There is one significant difference worth considering. The current list of programs in the Delphi Showcase is mostly made of utilities, shareware, Internet client applications, and the like. In my view, it would be very relevant to have business applications (including applications that are not for sale, but made for internal usage). I hope people who wrote software in this caterogy will submit and Embarcadero will accept them, as this is an equally large category of programs written in Delphi.

Kudos to the idea and let's hope it grows, as for now the list of Good Quality Applications written in Delphi at Delphi Wiki is much longer. The more the better in terms of visibility, even if some of the programs are not well known to the large public.

La guia de Delphi (Spanish edition of Delphi 2009 Handbook)

2009-10-31T01:08:57.883Z

Spanish Embarcadero partner Danysoft has released the Spanish edition of my book on Delphi 2009, titled "La guia de Delphi". This is the third published translation after those in Japanese and Portuguese.

More information about the book is available (in Spanish) at http://www.danysoft.com/bol/guiaDelphi.htm and you can buy the book at http://www.codegear-shop.com/epages/62042259.sf. From what I've been told, an ebook edition will also be made available.

Delphi 2010 Help Update 1

2009-10-30T00:09:30.300Z

Embarcadero has released the first update of Delphi 2010 Help. If you have the product, make sure you download it, as the improvements (even if not massive) are significant, particularly in the coverage of new units. As an example, I was not sure if the Diagnostics unit I found in the source code (featuring a very precise stop watch) was just slipped there or was an intentional as it was not mentioned. Now it is in the help, along with the new Timespan unit.

There is also new documentation for the GestureMgr unit, and some of the DataSnap components. For more information and download instructions see:

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/40075

Delphi 2010 Survey

2009-10-26T13:40:22.317Z

A new Delphi survey is available. It is important that many people fill it to let Embarcadero hear about your needs and desires, even if it takes about 20 minutes to go over is with some care. Over the last few years the survey has been used a a key input element to determine the future direction of the product, I have no doubt it will be highly considered this time as well.

Another interesting element is that by going through the questions you can figure out some of the possible future directions of the products, including those announced (Mac, Linux, 64 bit) and many specific features you might want to push for (O/R mapping, MVC model, native garbage collector, web server technologies, preferred databases, phones you wish to program for...). It looks like a very long wish list on Embarcadero side, on which you can comment and pick your favorites.

So, as soon as you have a few minutes available, go ahead and jump to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=XrKr27_2bmLfybzGzZi_2brsBQ_3d_3d.

Windows 6.1, Also Known as Seven

2009-10-23T18:39:00.375Z

Yesterday was the official launch date of the new version of Windows, of which I've been a very happy user for over a month. It is so much better than Vista, in terms of resource usage, start up and shut down times, finding drivers and downloading them automatically, that I forgive it not being able to pick up my office network settings properly and loosing the Internet connection a few times every day (while, before you ask, the XP box sitting near it has zero problems!) I also like the improved UI and have spent some time writing Delphi applications that interact with libraries, change the taskbar buttons, and take advantage of Direct2D (as I posted last week).

What I find quite odd is that even in tables providing a comprehensive list of versions of Windows (like this one by Alan Zeichick) people are asking what the name of the next version of Windows will be, but forget to ask with version of Windows the current one is. In fact, while Windows version 6.0 was called Vista, the current version 6.1 is called Seven (or 7). But (technically) version 7 it isn't. Which is just a little bit confusing. So will next version be called "Eight" and be version number 7?

In case you have any doubt, the following image from my System Configuration program, shows the version and name of the operating system I'm using (and that's the final version 6.1 build 7600):

Is technology fully controlled by marketing? At times this is the case, but that's quite true for any consumer-oriented business. Still it was nice when Windows 3.1 was called... 3.1!

SDC Conference 2009

2009-10-22T18:45:55.405Z

I'm back home from the SDC conference in the Netherlands. That's a large conference organized by a developers user group and covering multiple topics, from .NET development to Delphi, from database topics to .NET Nuke. I was involved in the Delphi track and followed mostly its sessions, with occasional glimpses in other topics. Delphi speakers don't have a lot of consideration among the other mostly Microsoft-oriented speakers, but give an interesting opportunity to interact with different point of views. Anyway, here are some sparse considerations and comments to sessions I attended. See also Pawel post on Delphi@SDC2009 for more comments.

First, the conference was considerably smaller than in the past. This is somewhat of a trend, but I got the impression that IT in the Netherlands was hit by the current financial crisis more than other European countries. There were other reasons (school holiday, conflicting conferences) that contributed to the numbers. The Delphi group was close to 50 people. Anyway, the Papendal conference center is very nice (they picked a different ones last year), even if far from Amsterdam, and the new hotel rooms much better. The luxury room Cary Jensen got was just unbelievable in both size and equipment, but all rooms seemed more than adequante (after you learned how to avoid freezing, but that's a different story).

I attended a few other Delphi sessions (beside giving 3 on Windows 7, Multi-threading, and Domain Specific Languages), which is unusual as I generally don't get to many other sessions at conferences I speak at. Anyway, I attended a very nice session with a very detailed overview of RTTI in Delphi 2010 by Delphi compiler-guru Barry Kelly. That was very nice and I did learn a couple of extra tricks I still have time to add to my book. He gave a second very intriguing session about writing a Garbage Collection and a Binary Serialization mechanism in Delphi, taking advantage of the new RTTI. His code was very tight but extremely powerful. Kudos. I wanted to attend Dr. Bob talk on DataSnap, but that was in Dutch!

Outside of the Delphi topics, I attended Hadi's session on jQuery (this was a replacement session for another speaker), which happend to be part of the Delphi session. I attended mostly because I'm going to speak on the exact same topic at the Italian ITDevCon (for which I still have discounted tickets), and wanted to see the appraoch of his presentation. Very nice session on a technology I liek and use a lot. Another session I attend was a disappointment. It was meant as a critique to relational databses in the current web distributed model, and it ended up almost as a compariosn between a stand alone SQL Server and using it on Azure. When facing issues in SQL Server (scalability, locking problems, and the like) the apparent solution was to suggest the same DB in a different deployment mode, rather than look at alternatives. The fact MySQL scales way better, has faster navigational interfaces, and is in fact used for most huge sites was not even omitted, but totally out of the picture as the equivalence was "relational model = Microsoft SQL Server". Very annoying, but not alone. Notice this was an architectural talk, not a vendor pitch.

Speaking of marketing, there was an "advanced" launch of Windos 7 that seemed quite technically oriented (seemed as it was partially in Dutch and after a while I ended playing soccer with the XBox console sitting in the main conference room...). Anyway, waiting for the end of the session proved useful as I won a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate (quite nice, even if I already have one). I won it along with 99 other people, but several hundred didn't win, so it was something.

What else? Beer was very good, as usual, food above average for the Netherlands (even if I really cannot get used to milk or milk shakes at lunch), and the hospitality of the organizers absolutely great, as we now almost expect. This is a unique conference, from many point of views, and one worth attending and speaking at, so keep an eye for next year conference.

A Delphi Powered (Google) Wave

2009-10-14T19:14:41.524Z

A Google Wave with a gadget powered by a Delphi REST server.

Notice that the database is queried again as you reopen the wave, so the gadget can show live, changing data from your database server. This makes Google Waves more powerful than most other collaboration tools.

ITDevCon, an European Delphi Conference in Italy

2009-10-12T18:50:07.232Z

In about a month I'll be speaking at ITDevCon , a brand new European Delphi Conference taking place in Italy (and I have some discounted tickets, see later for details).

The conference is organized by the local Embarcadero representative (Bittime), with whom I've a long and effective business relationship... and I'm also good friend of. The conference will be in Verona, on November 11 and 12 and is focused on Delphi, both native Win32 Delphi and Delphi for PHP. There will be 3 tracks, with at least one session in Italian and one in English language at each time slot. For those coming from abroad, Verona has only a minor airport, but distances from Milan (particularly the Orio al Serio BGY or Linate LIN airports) and Venice are limited. And if you are in Germany you can drive a take a train over Brenner pass and get right into Verona (the city itself is worth a visit, with its remarkable roman Arena still being used for concerts today).

Regarding the conference content, the Delphi Win32 international speakers include myself, Pawel Glowacki, Joachim Duerr, Holger Klemt, Daniel Magin, Boian Mitov, plus keynote speaker David Intersimone. (Seems there are going to be many Germans after all.) The Delphi for PHP guest spaeker will be Jose Leon Serna (one of the key authors of the product) along with quite a few Italian PHP gurus. Daniele Teti and Fabrizio Bitti are also speaking, beside organizing the event. There will also be sessions on agile modeling and software engineering topics.

I'm scheduled to speak on five different topics (partially classic and partially new... I'm always ready to offer custom training on those of course):

Generics and Closures in Delphi
Multitier with DataSnap
Domain Specific Languages in Delphi
Multi-Threading in Delphi
jQuery with Delphi

Looks like it will be a lot of work, but I'm looking forward to this new conference. If you are interested to attend consider that the 499 Euro price deadline has been extended and that (as I partner) I have a few admission tickets with a very significant discount I can sell you through my company. These are offered as a fist come, first served basis, and you'll be able to pay with credit card at my online shop. Send me an email ASAP if interested, and I'll forward you the discount code and any extra information you'd be interested in.

Before the Italian event, however, there is still the SDN Conference coming up next week in the Netherlands. I guess there is still time to sign up for that as well if you lie in the area. That's a conference I generally enjoy a lot, with its diverse mix of .NET, Delphi, PHP, and database tools developers. Stay tuned for reports and other information.