Midiar in English

Updating wrapper for Delphi 2009 and XDOM 4.1.6

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:51:00 GMT

So I finally got down to releasing the wrapper for XDOM 4.1.6 and Delphi 2009. There is also a compiler switch to use it on version 3.2, but the focus shifted to 4.1.x because of Delphi 2009.

Here is a summary of changes:

Avoiding error when doing xpath on tree with PreserveWhitespace in effect.
SelectNode and SelectNodes now return literal xpath query results (boolean, number, string) as TDomText/IDomText/IXmlNode. I like this tweak a lot, though if relying on it, your code will not work against MSXML, which gives an error.
Added licence text for MPL 1.1.
Changes for working in Delphi 2009 Tibúron (requires XDOM 4.1.6 or later).
Renamed ox31 prefixes to ox4.
Uses TXmlInputSource for XDOM v4 in loadxml() and loadFromStream().

And one known bug: When doing an XPath query of "/", TXMLDocument's DocumentElement gets wiped out, and in Delphi 6 it also gives a nasty error. I haven't located the bug, fixed it, or made a workaround yet. But I wanted to get the current stuff out now.

Download gtcXdomDom-20081111, install the package, and select "Open XML 4.1" as DOMVendor in TXMLDocument.gtcXdomDom-20081111.zip

(This 4.1 wrapper is a reworked version, originally based on Borland's 2.4 wrapper, so the Creative Commons licence on this blog does not apply to my wrapper. There is licence text at the start of the .pas file, similar to the XDOM licence.)

Delphi Prism

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:49:01 GMT

I commented earlier on a French claim that Delphi would be offered as a plugin for Visual Studio. And I thought it might be a good idea. Now Nick Hodges has apparently announced such a thing. It will be interesting to see how much is won by using this product. The earlier conclusion, at least regarding Compact Framework, was that this plugin repackaging would not help a bit. Maybe things have changed, or maybe Delphi .Net is a hard sell outside VS.

Now, do we have a JVM (Netbeans/Eclipse) Delphi plugin somewhere, too? Just kidding.

No longer lost in translation!

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:49:00 GMT

Finally, the translation of a complete starter package in DragonRaid is done! That includes the Adventure Master Manual and the LightRaider Handbook, as well as incorporating the new versions of the LightRaider Challenge 1 and 2, instead of the old LightRaider Test. The Rescue of the Sacred Scrolls adventure is not included.

As the LRC 1 and 2 were based on some updated rules, I also updated the LRH and AMM to include those rules, with new Abilities and weapons, as well as the new understanding of Solo Battle. I even crammed in some clarification of running dragon battle from the DragonRaid 2nd edition. That is going to be of great help when Adventure Masters get to that point, because I at least have felt very inadequate when running dragon battles.

The texts were delivered a month ago, but last night I could finally send the texts fully proofread to the Sunday School Union (NSSF).

This is so good! Praise the Lord!

Breaking a cloned TClientDataSet free

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:44:00 GMT

I did some fiddling around with CloneDataSet some years ago, and couldn't find an easy way to break the cloning relationship between the two datasets. But VCL surely must take care of that when freeing stuff? So I decided to just tell both datasets that the other is freed. And then they are free!

Setting up SharePoint on a Domain Controller

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:04:00 GMT

I wanted to setup a SharePoint site for testing yesterday. What I wanted to try out was the SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK). Now, for testing this I had to use our Win2003 server, and guess what: That server is a domain controller, too. And that is a problem. Now I'm fond of happy endings, if they're well written, so I'd better write well. What I did was follow GettingStarted.pdf from the SLK. It told me to install Mssql 2005 with all the services running under Network Service. That is not possible, or at least not supported, on a domain controller. So I did get a problem when I tried the Configure SharePoint Learning Kit step. The SharePoint Manager complained that "Login failed for user 'NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE'".

But luckily a guy called Luke Nyswonger came to the rescue with a tip about how to avoid the error. So this is what I did:

Under Security, I added NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE as a login.
Then I doubleclicked the new login, and added dbcreator as a server role.

That's all there was to it! But it didn't work before I did that little piece of setup.

Filling a cxGrid

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 05:00:00 GMT

I think I will document a few of the nice-to-remember coding tips that I find useful from time to time. Here is the first one, how to fill a DevExpress TcxGrid dynamically (QGrid 5), when you don't know the fields on beforehand, or don't want to lock things down in design:

Delphi as a Visual Studio add-in?

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 23:41:47 GMT

Huw Collingbourne blogged about a notice in the French journal Le Monde Informatique. They claim that Delphi may from now on be delivered as an add-in to Visual Studio.

Maybe I should say "about time"? Danny Thorpe blogged about the problem of CF designers on February 26, 2005 (found it in Google's cache after searching for "danny thorpe delphi visual studio compact framework"), and this may be one way to fix it. RemObjects' Chrome was much quicker to adopt .Net 2.0 (but they don't have CF in their bundled offering - haven't tried Chrome in a full VS).

It would mean a lower profile for the CodeGear company, and for Delphi. An add-in, not a... well, platform. Would we buy Delphi the IDE if we could buy Delphi the add-in? Yes, for Win32 work, we would. For .Net programming - getting access to the designers is much of the point in having an IDE.

The add-in version of Delphi could serve as a preview of the compiler that will be included in the next IDE version. Could be healthy, stopping complaints about Delphi lagging behind. That is important, because Chrome is already plugging that gap.

[Update: It turns out that the news item was actually expressing the journalist's view about what CodeGear should do, not referring to decisions made by CodeGear. Like I wrote above, the suggestion is perfectly sane, but this journalist Pierre Tran got his methods a bit mixed up.]

[Update: Craig Stuntz resolutely shoots down the CF argument.]

[Update again: It turns out that there is a CodePlex project called "Delphi for Visual Studio". Not sure how much use it is.]

Updating wrapper for XDOM 3.2.1

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 19:39:17 GMT

Thank you, Thomas Mueller, for doing what was necessary to get the wrapper running on XDOM 3.2 and Delphi 2006, essentially reinstating the WRAPVER1.1 compiler constant which was there in Borland's wrapper. I'm sorry, but I also changed the file names, reflecting the switch to 3.2, and now a package for each of Delphi 6 and 2006. [Update: I did not update the class names, which would be logical, but creates more hassle.]

Didn't look like XDOM had changed much in 3.2.1. Delphi 2006 is the important thing here. And my humble TXmlDocument program for grabbing parts of a document by XPath performed beautifully in 2006, too.

Download gtcXdom32Dom20060707, install the package, and select "Open XML 3.2" as DOMVendor in TXMLDocument.

(This 3.2 wrapper is a reworked version, originally based on Borland's 2.4 wrapper, so the Creative Commons licence on this blog probably does not apply to my wrapper.)

The DragonRaid teenagers to create a new adventure

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 22:54:44 GMT

Now that the teenagers have fought their way through a bunch of adventures, it feels a bit lame to start over doing the beginners' adventures, even though not everyone have done them all. That's why we yesterday decided to embark on some adventure creation! It will be exciting, and we can learn a whole lot that way too.

May the OverLord of Many Names be with us.

Updating wrapper again for XDOM 3.1.27

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 12:54:56 GMT

I just updated the IDomNode wrapper to take advantage of the OnLookupNamespaceURI event that Dieter Köhler implemented in XDOM 3.1.27, so we can take advantage of namespace prefixes defined in the application instead of whatever prefixes are used in the arbitrary document supplied. Thank you, Dieter.

Download gtcXdom31Dom20051120, install the package, and select "Open XML 3.1" as DOMVendor in TXMLDocument.

[Update: This 3.1 wrapper is a reworked version, originally based on Borland's 2.4 wrapper, so the Creative Commons licence on this blog does not apply to my wrapper.]