Delphi Stuff

I’ve been rather quiet on here lately. But I’ve kept my eyes open on what things have been appearing on the ARPANET relating to Delphi. I kept a list of things that piqued my interest.

On the off-chance you’ve missed any of these and might find them of interest, here’s a list of Delphi stuff.

Open source code bases:

• Delphi IDE shortcut finder by Nicholas Ring on github (Delphi XE onwards should work)
• RAD-Split by Simon Stuart on github – dockable split-screen editors (XE2, XE5 and XE7 packages supplied, should work in others)
• Parnassus Bookmarks by David Millington, a new IDE bookmarks replacement plugin (Delphi XE and later)
• LaKraven Studios Standard Library by Simon Stuart on github (Delphi XE3-XE8 packages supplied at time of writing)
• FMX Enhancements Library by Simon Stuart on github (relies on LaKraven Studios Standard Library, above)
• AGE Open Source multi-platform gaming engine, a 2.5D video game engine (based on FMX core) by Simon Stuart (Delphi XE5 and later)
• GLScene on SourceForge, an OpenGL based 3D library – read more here (unclear which Delphi versions are supported)
• SynEdit on Sourceforge, a syntax highlighting edit control, not based on Windows common controls (packages supplied for Delphi 5 through to Delphi XE6 at the time of writing)
• Multithreading – The Delphi Way, by Martin Harvey, an online guide/eBook, hosted on Nick Hodges’ site (written in the era of Delphi 6)
• Turbo Pascal compiler in JavaScript by Lawrence Kesteloot – read about it here, source on github here
• Selective Debug DCUs by Uwe Raabe (supports Delphi XE to XE8 at the time of writing)
• Enabling Windows 10 Aero Glass (aka Blur Behind) in Delphi by Victor Alberto Gil (applicable to Delphi XE and later)
• DelphiDoom on Sourceforge by Jim Valavanis. This is a port of the Doom code base to Delphi (it is unclear which Delphi versions are supported)
• DelphiQuake on SourceForge by Jim Valavanis. This is a port of the Quake code base to Delphi and supersedes this older version (it is unclear which Delphi versions are supported)
• Doom 3 Delphi conversion project on Sourceforge (it is unclear which Delphi versions are supported)
• Delphi GLQuake
• Quake 2 Delphi conversion project on Sourceforge (it is unclear which Delphi versions are supported)

WinSoft XE has released their commercial NFC Library for Android 2.0 for Delphi/C++Builder XE7 and XE8 – see FMX Express mention here. This is a ready made approach to NFC, which might be preferable to the do-it-yourself approach previously (and still) freely available:

• My article on NFC in Delphi XE7 – see FMX Express mention here
• Daniel Magin’s article on NFC in Delphi XE6 and XE7 – see FMX Express mention here

One of the stalwarts of the old Delphi team, Charles Jazdzewski, aka Chuck J (also aka DJ Jazzy Chuck aka The Chuckinator aka Chuck-a-luck-a-high-chuck-a-hiney-ho), has been posting some nostalgic memories about the origins of the Delphi project:

• Properties on Purpose
• First-class Class
• The Delphi Event
• A Component of The Story
• Will The True Component Please Stand Up
• The Biggest Bang
• Simplicity Isn't Simple

Old Borland videos:

• The Adventures of Turboman – Part 1
• Delphi Transformer
• Delphi Oktoberfest
• Developer Tool Time
• Paul Gross and The Temple of Doom from BorCon 1996 – unfortunately this has been blocked from YouTue thanks to a copyright infringement claim :( If you’ve got a copy of this one, do let me know!
• Software Wars from BorCon 1997

Borland Old Testament Histories by Verity Stob

1. Book of Anders (1996)
2. Yocam hokum (1998)
3. Book of Yoc-am (contd.) (1999)
4. Borland Revelations (2004)
5. Borland's Delphi Goodbye (2006)
6. A reading from the second book of Codh (2008)
7. Sons of Kahn: The Apocrypha (2010)
8. The Sons of Khan and the Pascal Spring (2012)
9. The Sons of Kahn and the assembly language of the internet (2012)

Not quite Delphi stuff:

• How to build the Wolfenstein 3D source code with Borland C++ 3.1
• Android ports of Doom3, Quake I, Quake II, Quake III

Unlikely to actually be interesting to anyone other than myself, but I was following a chain of posts on the old Windows Error Reporting tool, Dr Watson:

• Why is Windows Error Reporting nicknamed "Dr. Watson"?
• What did the Ignore button do in Windows 3.1 when an application encountered a general protection fault?

This led me back to a post by Matt Pietrek (who worked for Borland and wrote TDump and WinSpector) from his awesome Under The Hood column:

• Follow on to Raymond's post on Dr. Watson

and right at the end he included a link to one of my various Undocumented Easter Eggs pages :o) That made me smile!

Two Decades, Eh?

Well, well, well, it turns out I’ve been working for myself for two decades now! I left Borland in January 1995, thinking I could manage maybe about 5 years if I was lucky and did well before I got another full time job. And now we’re in 2015! How time flies when you’re having fun :o)

Oh yeah, and a couple of weeks after I left my last employed job Delphi 1 came out, and that was awesome too! And my oh my, it’s nearly the 20th anniversary of the launch date of this great programming language: Feb 14th 1995.

To celebrate this milestone, Embo is hosting an online Delphi Week leading up to the Feb 14th launch date anniversary, Feb 9th to 13th. You can read more about it on this community news post and this community event post. Do read up on it and try and join in – it should be fun :o)

Off to Australia to talk at ADUG Symposium 2015

I’m delighted to be able to announce that I’m off to Australia in March to do some talks at the ADUG Symposium 2015!

It’s a long way to travel, but I’m really looking forward to talking to the ADUG members about Delphi XE7 in both Melbourne and Canberra.

I’ve got a couple of talks scheduled in. I’ll be talking about consuming Android OS features that are outside the scope of what the FMX framework wraps up, and also looking at creative debugging techniques.

Hopefully I’ll manage to shed the jetlag in the few days prior to the event, when I shall be enjoying the delights of Melbourne, and then after the 2 events I’ll soak up Canberra before returning back to normality.

Thanks for inviting me along, ADUG – I can’t wait to join you in Australia!

Delphi and Android services (part 3)

Once upon a time I uploaded a Delphi sample app to the Google Play Store, written in Delphi XE5 and implementing an Android service. I wrote about the published app in this post and supplied the source in this follow-up post.

There was an issue that’s been hanging around with that sample project. When pulled into Delphi XE7 and updated so it all compiled nicely, it didn’t play ball when deployed. Instead it hung.

I’ve eventually worked through the to-do list enough to take a look at the problem. For one reason or another starting the service in the OnCreate event handler caused an issue thanks to some required thread synchronisation, which no longer functions as I wanted it to.

I’ve worked around the problem by very slightly delaying the service starting by use of a one-shot timer. Then the form setup is done and dusted by the time the service is invoked and all seems to be well.

An updated download archive is available here, which contains the original Delphi XE5 project and a Delphi XE7 equivalent, which should now be functionally equivalent.

Another update has been made to the project download, which now contains Delphi XE8 support. Delphi 10 Seattle introduces its own support for native Android services, but Delphi XE8 / Lollipop made some changes that broke the demo as it was originally written. The XE8 version of the project should hopefully resolve that problem.