Lazy.. Lazy...

Well.. lets say it... I am very lazy :-) Since about a month or er.. more I haven't token care of my blog.. since I started this blog (about a year ago) not many delphi specific posts had been introduced here.. but that's live... :-) In fact I have been always like that.. I start something with great entusiasm and after a couple of weeks I loose illusion... but I still got a spark of it for my blog. Anyway I think I am writting this for my own as probably only Gloria and William read this lines. Hello Gloria, Hello William.. howdy ? :-))))))).
This last months I have been visiting many blogs and the borland newsgroups, and I see how complicated this world of Delphi is, but I keep on working and doing what I like.
This last times I was deciding about a change of the Image format that I use at my projects, as for me bmp is so simple and weighty, at the UI and so.
Since long time ago, I got bookmarked, a website from an excellent Delphi Coder Mike Lischke.He is the producer of the GraphicEx Library. When you install this library Delphi can read many,many new image formarts (PSD,GIF,TIFF,PNG) althought with some limitations in some formats, it is awesome. So I started testing this for some time using the GIF format, as it produces small files and it's transparency works perfectly in Delphi. After some tests and feelling satisfied I started implementing the GIF format to all my projects and I shorted the size of some projects about 2 or 3 megs. Great !
Well... after some time I played with the PNG format. This format is really a beast, as it accepts 16million colors (not as gif wich is limited to 256), it accepts transparency, and.. and... Alpha blending. OOOOhh... alpha blending... this is a blaster... but GraphicEx does not support the Alpha Blending feature in the PNG format, so I looked around the net, googleing, and found this page: http://pngdelphi.sourceforge.net/ Ohh... what a sweet think... when I installed the source and tryed a PNG image... my eyes started to cry.. what a beatifull think.. look.. look how pretty the thinks could look like with a Alpha blended Image:

This is an Image of a Form in Design mode using three png images from Foood's, a great Icon producer.













PNG files, if you don't abuse, are a bit large than gif's but much shorter than bmps with transparency and alphablending, so I decided to change it all to PNG.. Now coding being able to use those PNG images is just fun. I really recomend it to everyone. Well I only wanted to drop some few words and got out a little article. And for the end, and knowing how I am (as my posts are countend monthly :-)) ... I wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2006 in advance, and at least a happy Delphi 2006 wich is arround the corner.

Delphi is definetly Mediterranean :-)

Well.. time has passed since my last post... and many thinks happened. First of all Delphi 2005 is approaching to starting to be a usable IDE. The latest "unofficial" patches by Allen Bauer made this happen. Also a Delphi roadmap has been annouced. Good !. 64Bit Compiler, Unicode VCL, Quality and performance, Great. DeXter (Next delphi Version) is appearing at the horizon.You may find a good compilation of all this here.
At his latest post Allen, explained something about Delphi Passion, and I rather think he is quite right ! At least from my part. Some days It makes me feel proud, some days it makes me angry (when it hangs), and when I see those "crab" programs coded with VB.. it makes me feel at the top of the hill... for me thats passion... so that's why Delphi is definetly Mediterranean :-).

Well. From my part I must apologize for my long absence here at my blog, but you know, I lost some motivation during this last months to write any entry here. Now with all forthcommings, and future plans, I am starting to feel more vitalized.
I have some plans to publish here, some of my components I have developed during these last years that I haven't uploaded at my habitual favorite Delphi Site at Torry.
Happy Coding to everyone.

Between begin...end;

Ohhh god... at 28/04/2005 was my last post in my blog... how fast time passes... Well at the meantime I have been, of course, coding with Delphi ... er.. mmm SEVEN :-).. I start smoking again (sorry gloria.. :-) i could not resist to smoke again..) but only 3 or 4 cigs a day (compared with my 2 packages a day this is nothing) and work, work, work... well nothing exciting.
I want a Change.. since year 2000 nothing but problems came into my horizon so... 2006 will be the beginning of the light... Windows Vista, Delphi 2006 (pls bland... make it 2006 not 2,06 :-) ) and more to come... so...

procedure TForm1.ARButton1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
V_Date : TDateTime;
V_End_of_Year : TDateTime;
V_Remaing_Days_For_My_Beer_Party : Integer;

begin
V_Date := Now;
V_End_of_Year := EndOfTheYear(V_Date);
V_Remaing_Days_For_My_Beer_Party := DaysBetween(V_Date,V_End_of_Year);
ShowMessage(Format('There are %d remaining Days for my Beer Party',[V_Remaing_Days_For_My_Beer_Party]));

Have a great day all of you...

Coding with D7... do not disturb #;-)

Helloooo... my dear blog-readers... what's up ?... Now coding is good. Why ? Quite easy to explain... this last time I am a very busy and a happy D7 coder.
Since my IDE "Rollback" (and the purchase of a new keyboard :-) ) my fingers fly over the keyboard and the IDE is receiving and processing the input as it should... no hangs, speed... well in a word... productivity...
Well... in the air is something about UPD3 for D2005 but I am quite pessimistic about the fixes it could maybe do, so I rather thing we all of us have to wait until D10. (Please Borland do not release a D2006, do a "back to the roots", leave the dark side :-) and come back to us, the developers).
I have been reading at Borland newsgroups many posts from people with bug reports, QC is floaded with D2005 bug entries... Believe me... I LOVE DELPHI, but this D2005 is the greatest nonsense of all Delphi releases I have ever seen... Buggy, slow, unstable, unpredictable. Please don't tell me that it is solid as a rock since UPD2, many developers, me included, are having only problems with this IDE, I could be a clumsy and useless developer but what about all other hundreds of developers that complain about the problems they are having ?
Well that was it for today... I needed to say this...

Delphi 2005 is dead... God save Delphi 7 !!!!

Well.. it is the moment... I had enough of slowlyness, strange behaviours, sudden hungs, notepad alike code editor (code completion is unable to show a second level record data), after a sudden hung and the loss again of some unsaved code... I just did it... Pressed the top right X, and definetively closed D2005 for some long time (my ram chips will be very grateful). This last time with D2,5 (yes you read right... D2,5) I was feeling as being developing with a turtle. I had much patience but know it was enought.
I pressed a precious D7 icon on my desktop... after some a seconds something powerfull appeared again on my screen... THE REAL DELPHI... after some setting here and setting there... I felt again as the king of the mountain, no code can resist now, again the rule that I have had in my mind allways since earlier versions is active "If it is possible in windows, then it is possible with Delphi". Cheers.

Silly Blog...

I don't know why but my blog is not working correctly. It does not show up my last article of the Delphi Installation Organization. So if you are interested you may access it by looking at the April 2005 archives.

Delphi Installation Organization Part 4

Well.. you can believe your eyes... here it is.. the last article of the Delphi Installation Organization.. incredible.. After receiving many emails supporting my blog (in fact only 1 from Esteban #:-D.. thank you again Esteban for your support) I decided to finish my article. I just took my mug, filled it with milk... heated it on my microwave, added some, some.. err... plenty Cofeee and there it is... the Article.
On last article I explained the last configuration steps of the Delphi IDE. Now you should have all dcp's and bpl's (except the ones that Delphi Installs of course) located at a precide folder, all your component sources also well placed at they folders and so on. Now after having set all this up, and having all this well organized, we want to be able to store all this settings so that we could be able to restore all this in a minute if we may have to reinstall Delphi or our OS. All this settings, organized, are going to be stored in a precise sub-folder at our BDS folder that is named Settings. If you remember I explained it at the First Chapter of this article. I will explain what settings are placed at each subfolder of the Settings folder, and how are they retrieved to place them there and a brief explanation of what they are:

G:\BDS\Settings\Bin:
Here I place all settings that are going to be copied to the $(BDS)\Bin folder. Here I have two files, the Delphi.dct file and my Programming.dst file. Delphi.dct is a file that holds all of our configured Component Templates at the Delphi IDE. Programming.dst is my Desktop Speedsetting file. So once I do a change of any of this files I copy them from the $(BDS)\Bin Folder to my G:\BDS\Settings\Bin Folder for backup.

G:\BDS\Settings\Delphi 2005 Examples:
This folder holds some Borland Samples for D2005 that once installed you get it to be opened on the IDE wellcome page. I got them from a Delphi Blog (you may find it at CodeCentral) . In fact this is not vital but I have placed here as many of the Samples are usefull for me for testing purposes.

G:\BDS\Settings\Objrepos:
Here I store all my reformated Units/Forms of the object Reposistory and the Configuration file for the IDE. For Example I have edited some of the Objrepos files from the Delphi Installation folder just to re-format them as I like them to look like, so each time I Invoke a FileNewASP .NET Page I get them as I want it to look like, so I don't have to reformat it's source each time. I also have some Form Templates Stored in a fixed Place somewhere outside of the G:\BDS\ Folder (in fact in my G:\BDS Projects Folder :-) ) These form templates where added as template to the object repository. All this settings are stored in the BorlandStudioRepository.xml, so copy the files edited at the $(BDS)\Objrepos Folder and the before mentioned xml file and store them here for Backup.

G:\BDS\Settings\Patches:
Here I store all IDE patches install files. (With this IDE, Delphi 2005, too many #:-( and to short at the same time.)

G:\BDS\Settings\Path:
Here I store a txt file (path.txt for example) holding the Path information that I have to set each time I reinstall my os for the bpl and dcp dir.(as explained in previous article) At the moment it would be G:\BDS\_Win32\_bpl;G:\BDS\_Win32\_dcp.


G:\BDS\Settings\Registry:
Here I store the registry exports from the Delphi Settings at the registry. I export normally three different paths from the registry (so I generate obviously three files).
a) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland.
b)HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\BDS
c)HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\BDS_WIN32.

The a) export is the whole Delphi Installation Settings store. (I store this for backup just in case I have some problems with the b) export.
The b) exported registry file is the Normal Delphi 2005 Settings at the registry.
The c) Exported registry file is a configured Delphi 2005 optimized for Win32 configuration to use with the -rBDS_WIN32 switch with the Delphi 2005 IDE.


G:\BDS\Settings\Settings Profile:
Some configuration settings of Delphi 2005 are stored in some place of your user profile, located at ApplicationData\Borland\BDS\3.0. You will find some files you may backup as the
CodeSnippets.xml file that has all your configured codesnippets, the DefProject.bdsproj that holds your default project options for all personalities (Delphi, NET, and C#) and some other as the Code Templates file (bds.dci)

So well.. after having stored all files as stated before, in the case you for example reinstall your os.. when it comes the time to install Delphi see how easy and fast it will be to restore the settings to its "production" state with all configured.
a) Install Delphi. (Bare in mind you must install of course delphi to the same path allways at it was when you exported the registry file)
b) Execute Delphi for first time so all default values are created at the registry.
c) Close Delphi .
d) Execute all the patches needed in order.
e) Set the path as stored in the G:\BDS\Settings\Path\Path.txt for our bpl's and dcp's.
f) Copy all files from the G:\BDS\Settings\bin to the $(BDS)\Bin Folder.
g) Copy all files from the G:\BDS\Settings\Objrepos to the $(BDS)\Objrepos Folder.
h) Copy al files from the G:\BDS\Settings\Settings Profile to its destination part.
i) *CAUTION* with this.Delete the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\BDS key at the registry (be carefull with deleting keys at the registry.. just only the above mentioned should be deleted. I you delete some other key you may turn your os to unusable and loose some or all of your data.)
j) Import the Registry File where you exported the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\BDS key
k) you are done !!!! Execute Delphi and you will have all set at it was before.

The process from e to j is fast as the lightning and you have all nicelly setup again.
Buff.. and that was it all for today friends. I wish you understood it all and forget my typos. #;.D. Se you soon again back here.

Wel.. some bytes in... #:-D

Yes... back again... and here am I dropping some bytes into my blog.
I noticed that nobody is reading this blog... so why should I finish my Delphi Installation article ? In fact my I don't fancy to write about this anymore...
And that was it... for today... sorry for my bad mood...

Delphi ?... No Delphi this days...

Oh... !!!
My Blog... #:-) I just where browsing around using my favourites, and suddenly came across my own blog, and realized that I did not "blog" a word since the 22 of February. Days just pass away... Well I have to finish the previous block of posts about Delphi Installation.. and then I have so many things I would like to say/write.. so let me pass again around here in a couple of days and I promise you that some few chars will be dropped here...

Back to work

Well.. I am... back to work... I had some great 1 week hollidays... now is time to sync myself with all pending things at my work.... in short I post my last article about Delphi Installation Organization.

Delphi Installation Organization Part 3

Well.. had may coffee... (sorry... my two coffees) and know I fell quite motivated to press some of my favorite keys... those keys at my keyboard to explain the Delphi Installation Organization.
At my last post I explained the level 1 folders at the _Win32 Folder. Today I will explain how I have configured my Delphi base Settings. Well.. the first thing you must bare in mind is that I will explain all this in a generic point of view... I mean that I will try to make it at least D5,D6,D7 or D2005 compatible... but surelly the ways to get to the configuration parameter at the different IDE's may differ. So lets dive into it...
Get your IDE options and find following parameters:

Delphi Library Path:
Well.. in here there must be all Directories for all units that will be used at any uses clause at all your delphi projects... in here I have all directories I use and the ones that Delphi has set at the installation.. My added paths could be for example:

G:\BDS\_Win32\_Consts
G:\BDS\_Win32\_library\Albert Research
G:\BDS\_Win32\_library\GraphicEx
$(BDS)\lib

as you maybe have noticed I have intentionally set as the last order the standard delphi folders, this is because I want to have My units being found first... for example If I want to have my own consts as I explained on Part 2 of this article, I add the following folder G:\BDS\_Win32\_Consts at the very first order off all the library path then my custom consts units would be found first and used to compile my projects... so there will be no need to modify, delete, move the original consts units from the Delphi Installation folder. Cool isnt it ?... The fact is that the intention of all this article is to avoid to delete,modify nothing from the Delphi Instalation folder.
Package OutPut Directory:
This should be set to G:\BDS\_Win32\_bpl so that any compiled package will be produced in here. This is because we want all our packages live together in the same folder... not all around the hard disk... why? ... well at this moment (there are other reasons but it is to soon for explaining).. just think it is for doing a easier backup of all your Delphi Stuff..
DCP Output Directory:
This should be set to G:\BDS\_Win32\_dcp for the same reasons explained above.

Important.Having set this, you must modify the library path of your system adding the _dcp and _bpl path to it...

Browsing Path:
In here you set the folder from where the IDE seeks for units as in the Library path... but this is for "Browsing the Units"... just what happens when you CTRL-Click a unit name at the uses clause in the Code Editor. My settings would be similar as in the Library Path... but I rather prefer here to give more importance to de Delphi VCL units... having in mind those setting set with the translated consts... the folders at my IDE could be like following:
G:\BDS\_Win32\_Consts
$(BDS)\source\Win32\vcl
$(BDS)\source\Win32\rtl\common
...
G:\BDS\_Win32\_library\Albert Research
...
and so on..


Well... that was it for today... in the next (and last) article from this series I will explain how and what to store from the delphi Instalation to be able to, after reinstalling the os and Delphi, set Delphi to its production state in a few seconds.

Work and Hollidays

Well.. I presume I have been a bad blogger. There has been no post since one week or more. Why?... well.. quite easy... the same problem as everyone... work !!!
It has been a terrible week... we had some changes and movings at my work, and I could not even drop a few lines into my blog, because I was exhausted every day when I arrived at home. In fact my computer stayed turned off all this week.
This next week I have hollidays... (my first in quite a lot of years) so maybe there will be an ocasion to write the missing parts of the Delphi Installation Organization. See you then...

Sorry to all... this week will be quite busy for me... so there will be no blog time available for me... maybe some late nite post... but surelly nothing until next week.

Delphi Installation Organization Part 2

Part2: Level 1 Folders and the _Win32 folder.

Today I will explain in a flash the main purpose of each first level folder, and some of the subfolders of them.
Lets begin with it !

_DotNET
This folder holds all related to DotNET.
_Win32
As you suposed this folder holds all related to Win32.
Component Library
This folder holds all original Component or Component packs sources. It does not matter if Win32 or DotNET.
Documents
All documentation,FAQ, etc.
Experts
Any Expert you may install for Delphi should be located here.
Programs
Any program related to Delphi or needed during developing should live here. As for example resource editors, database managers, etc.
Settings
All settings stored for the Delphi IDE stays in here. This folder is very important because it will hold al registry settings and files stored so you will be able to setup your delphi in a minute.

Ok.. I just explained the first level of the G:_BDS folder. Ok.. some names maybe sound weird to you.. but that is my way for setting folder names, you can of course use your own style of naming but I advice you to mantain the philosophy of each folder. Why the use of underscores "_" in some folders. Well.. underscores are just for sorting. I wanted to appear my both most daily used folders of all this first level at the very beggining of the tree.
I would like to jump out from the DotNET part as I am a rookie on this, the folders created at this level are just a little copy from the used at the _Win32 folder that I will coment stright away.

_bpl
All bpl of all third party component packages are located here.That means that no bpl other than of course installed by Delphi itself should be located outside this folder.This folder should be on the environment path, and should be setup on delphi to be the package output directory, but this will be explained in another post.
_Consts
Well. Depending on the targeting country of your software you may want to have the delphi consts translated in here. Many Delphi related web pages offer the basic consts to be able to be downloaded. This files should be placed here. Of course, this path should be set at the most top level of the library path at the compiler configuration, but this also will be explained in another post.
_dcp
All dcp as with in the case of bpl will be located and placed here. As with bpl this folder should be on the environment path and should be setup om delphi to be the DCP output directory.
_library
Here is where I place all third party components sources. I create inside this folder, subfolders for the diferent component packs as for example and Albert Research folder for my own components, an GraphicEx for the components of Mike Lischke, etc. This folder and each subfolder should be added at the Delphi Options, library path and browsing path.
_library dcu
This folder will hold all dcu files that will be created by compiling any of the packages of the compoment sources of the _library folder. Having in mind this, you have then of course set the Unit output directory of each package you are compiling, to this folder. Doing so we will have allways all our _Library folder clean of the dcu files.
_library test
There is not much to explain about this folder. This folder should be added at the Delphi options Library Path, and browsing path, and I use it to just do fast installs of freeware components I donwload from the internet, to just test them. If I like them then I just move them to a folder Inside the _library folder if not i delete them from here and of course I delete the the bpl's and dcp's generated at the _bpl and _dcp. Whe have to stay always tidy :-).

Well. There are some more folders and Delphi configurations considerations that I will explain in the next post of this blog. Mmm.. today is wednesday so maybe on friday night or saturday I will throw some lines. Have a nice time.

Delphi Installation Organization Part.1

Part 1: Introduction

Since long time ago, I wanted to explain to other "delphiers" how I have organized my Delphi and how I store the settings so when I reinstall my OS.. I have set my Delphi in a few minutes as it was before reinstalling the O.S., so time has come and I will explain.
Let's start from the very beggining that is the partitioning of the Hard Disk,
I have partitioned my hard disk in serveral partitions... (one thing I recomend to everyone to do) . Normally I have C,D,E,G,X partitions. Let me explain the uses I do for the Partitions.

C= OS.. In this partition is where the OS is installed. Nothing else.
D=Programs. All programs are installed in here.. (Delphi for expample would be installed on D:\Program Files\Borland\...)
E=Internet. Small partition for Internet server ftp...
G=Data. This is the most important for me. All my Projects, Data, Documents are in here.
X=BackUps. Entire partition is Compressed. All Backups go to here.

Why the Use of diferent partitions for diferent purposes? Quite easy.. Everyone surelly know about this... after some months.. about half a year your OS get "dirty" and messed up and you start beginning to think to reinstall it. For me it is as easy as chewing a gum.. Because of all this partitioning I only need to copy my "documents and Settings" data to another folder and reinstall the os by deleting completely the C partition where it is only the OS data... all other data is safelly stored in the other partitions.
Well after explaing all this.. I start with my Delphi folder organization. My Delphi settings "live" in the G: partition... so you can substitute this G: with the letter of the partition you may use.
I have Two folders in the G: Partition for Delphi, and just to finish this Article (Part 1) I will enumerate the most important and explain both:

G:\BDS Projects is the folder where I store all my delphi projects. No need to explain the folder hierarchy as it is not important.


G:\BDS is the folder where I have stored all relative to Delphi. Folder hierarchy is as follows:

|-- G:\BDS
|
| |-- G:\BDS\_DotNET
| |
| | |-- G:\BDS\_DotNET\_library
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\_DotNET\_library dcuil
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\_DotNET\_library test
| | |
| |-- G:\BDS\_Win32
| |
| | |-- G:\BDS\_Win32\_bpl
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\_Win32\_Consts
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\_Win32\_dcp
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\_Win32\_library
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\_Win32\_library dcu
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\_Win32\_library test
| | |
| |-- G:\BDS\Component Library
| |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Component Library\Albert Research
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Component Library\GraphicEx
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Component Library\KBMMemTable
| | |
| |-- G:\BDS\Documents
| |
| |-- G:\BDS\Experts
| |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Experts\GExperts
| | |
| |-- G:\BDS\Programs
| |
| |-- G:\BDS\Settings
| |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Settings\Bin
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Settings\Delphi 2005 Examples
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Settings\Objrepos
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Settings\Patches
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Settings\Path
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Settings\Registry
| | |
| | |-- G:\BDS\Settings\Settings Profile

and that was it for today. Tomorrow or after tomorrow I will explain the main purpose of some folders in Part 2 of this article. See you then...

Another Day...

Yep... another day has passed... and today I am quite sad... Delphi 2005 is not what Delphi was before... Before everything was great.. Delphi worked fast and fantastic... now it is buggy and unstable. Nothing works as it was before... I am reading posts at many newsgroups and blogs... and only see the borlanders not adminiting the truth... D2005 needs an urgent remake... They are many interesting new features compared with D7... but quite a lot of them doesn't work.. refactoring is Buggy... very buggy and yes... with Sp1 installed (Borlanders always like to ask if the buggs are after Sp1 installed... they think that a 25Mg update would fix this... funny..).
Working with D2005 has turned to be a pain in the a***. Many codeinsight well.. what ever is named the think that appears when you press CTRL+SPACE.. doesn't work anymore.. with D7 you allways got all constants declared all units that where on the uses clause of the unit you where editing/coding showing up with it.. now if it finds a 60% you could be happy. Many features have been lost... it could be a so big list that I don't want to type it because I love Delphi...
Please Borland... I only expect you to love Delphi as I do... it deserves a better shape than you have given it at the 2005 version.

A little introduction

Well... now it is quite late... but I could not resist today to make a post to my blog. It is something new that amazes me.
First of all... let me introduce myself. I am a Programmer since 1985.. those old days with assembler with my beloved Z80... how easy live was those times... :-). I am a Delphi Programmer since 1997, I really started from a scratch.. I had no Idea of Pascal... oh... I remember those days where I did not know If I had to put a begin and a end to my code. I have developed some components and published them to some Delphi portals. ARCalendar,ARStoreForm,ARMVEdit are some of them.... yes all starting with AR (Albert Research)... my beloved Nick since the very begging. So that will be it for today... Anyway I rather think I am writting all this for my own because surelly nobody will read my blog...

My First Blog Entry

Well... maybe this will be te typical "HelloWorld" stuff... but this is a must. :-) My very first blog Entry... Hello World
I am a Delphi Programmer interested in many things I will try to explain to all of you around the world that would dare to read my bad english.
So there it is... I will sincerelly try to be updated every day... let's se what happens..

My first thank you should go to Mrs/Miss Gloria Ho that Blogs here at http://gloriaho.blogspot.com/ , who was really nice and fast to give away one of her invites for gmail.. thank you very much again gloria.