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Hi, I'd like to share a post. It addressed a byte loss issue captured from a discussion. // Compile with code page 936 program Problem; const strPublicKey: RawByteString = #$30#$3C#$30#$0D#$06#$09#$2A#$86#$48#$86#$F7#$0D#$01#$01#$01#$05 + #$00#$03#$2B#$00#$30#$28#$02#$21#$00#$A4#$65#$B8#$CD#$B4#$29#$A9 + #$64#$1A#$C5#$80#$55#$22#$1B#$BB#$C5#$98#$36#$B9#$23#$0C#$CA#$D4 + #$A8#$B8#$7C#$E6#$32#$E3#$89#$3D#$77#$02#$03#$01#$00#$01; begin Writeln(Length(strPublicKey)); // expected 62 got 58 - why? Readln; end. https://devjetsoftware.com/delphi/byte-loss-in-string-literal-concatenation/

No. You have no way of knowing what the caller has put on the stack (or in the registers), what the called method does with it, what it returns and how. You can probably make it work for very simple delegate types (TNotifyEvent for example) but I think it would be better to find a less fragile solution.

Of course there ARE times when the use of ANSI strings makes sense. One example is when sending data to/from an external device down an RS232 port where the external device uses a protocol based on simple ANSI text. We have many real world cases such as this (eg Eurotherm temperature controllers). The key point that @David Heffernan makes is that you should choose your types carefully to closely (or exactly!) reflect your needs. Time spent thinking carefully about your type selection will save you time in the long run.....

In this post, I'll share all the workarounds I use when LSP fails, which have greatly helped me during coding. Hopefully, you'll find them useful before Embarcadero completely fixes the LSP Server, which I'm sure will be soon. I'll also mention GExperts throughout this post, as it includes some useful features that can speed up using the tools listed below. Delphi Uses Helper Link: https://delphisorcery.blogspot.com/2021/03/introducing-delphi-uses-helper.html Feature: proper replacement for the Find Unit... refactor (Ctrl+Shift+A) feature. Description This has been by far the most helpful plugin. It's as simple as typing the name of a type and pressing Ctrl+Shift+A to find the unit where it's declared. When the window pops up, you can press Enter to add the unit to the uses section (use the left/right arrows to switch between interface and implementation sections), or press Shift+Enter to open the unit and jump to the line where the type is declared. GExperts bonus: The IDE already has a similar feature under the Refactor menu with the same shortcut, Ctrl+Shift+A, but it doesn’t work well and is certainly not as fast as Delphi Uses Helper. However, sometimes the default feature will trigger instead of the plugin (e.g., when pressing the shortcut without any text at the caret position). To remove the default shortcut, use GExperts' IDE Menu Shortcuts: find the shortcut under Refactor > Find Unit... (it should be the last one), and assign it to another key. MMX - Show Related Classes Link: https://www.mmx-delphi.de/ Feature: shows ancestor class, implemented interfaces, and sibling classes for a given class. Description Want to quickly navigate to a class’s ancestor or interface, or find out which siblings it has? This feature gives you exactly that, neatly and efficiently. To use it, right-click and go to MMX Commands > Navigate and Move > Show Related Classes. Or even better, map a shortcut by going to MMX > Properties > Key Bindings and finding Show Related Classes. I’ve personally mapped it to Shift+Alt+3. MMX - Open Unit... Link: https://www.mmx-delphi.de/ Feature: displays searchable units based on set configuration. Description Quickly displays all units based on your configuration. The configuration allows for adding units from the currently opened project or project group, and the following paths: Project Search path, IDE Library path, and IDE Browsing path. Find Original Symbol Feature: additional help navigating to a unit, type, or method. Description Using Find Declaration (Ctrl+Click) is known to fail occasionally, especially on bigger projects. What I've found helpful at times is to try using the Find Original Symbol that's located under the Search > Find Symbols menu item. I've personally mapped the Find Declaration to Ctrl+< and the Find Original Symbol to Ctrl+Shift+< through the GExperts IDE Menu Shortcuts, and I spam them when needed. It does help sometimes. Add a shortcut to the Reload LSP Server menu item Link: https://github.com/havrlisan/zx-idetools/blob/main/Source/Zx.IT.KeyBinding.ReloadLSPServer.pas Description In Delphi 12.1, a menu item Reload LSP Server was added under the Tools menu. Before that, you could add a custom tool to manually kill the LSP, and the IDE would restart it automatically. Unfortunately, they didn't add a shortcut for the menu item, so your options are limited to mouse clicks or to clicking Alt > T > accelerated key. Note that the accelerated key will be automatically assigned, and it depends on your menu items under the Tools menu, which sucks because that's the most changeable menu (because of custom tools, or third-party plugins). Usually, I'd use GExperts IDE Menu Shortcuts to manually add the shortcut, but the Reload LSP Server menu item doesn't show up there. After some debugging, I realized that the menu item in question isn't registered on IDE startup, but is loaded sometime after all other packages are loaded. My best guess is that the GExperts remembers the menu items when loaded, and doesn't re-fetch them afterward (I'm too lazy to search through the source code, sorry). So I decided to implement an IDE notifier that listens to a "ProjectGroupOpen" notification and then tries to find the Reload LSP Server menu item and assigns the shortcut to it. I've set the default shortcut to Alt+Shift+W, but the code is quite simple and is easily portable to a package of your own. That's all I've got so far. If you have some other features or tips, feel free to share them in this post!

What is wrong with the world of Delphi programmers that in 2025 there are still people who can't understand the difference between text and bytes? The article you link to goes on and on about text but your data is bytes. Why not just use the correct data type?

Thanks for the heads up. As you might gather, that import has not been updated to include newer APIs in a while. I'm planning on updating it, as well as look at those methods you mentioned.

I might do that, explaining the best I can what happened here. And about the demo, yes it is really good but overkill for my use case, but now I know the imports I need are in the Kastri repo, on the DW.iOSapi.Photos unit, so I can use just the bits related to permission checking and requesting. But... - PHPhotoLibrary.requestAuthorization asks for full-access, so aware users will see the inconsistency between the request and the purpose (save a single image) and will deny. I can always ask them again to give the previously denied permission explaining what's happening, but still feels hacky. Someone at Apple forgot a couple things about consistency when designed this. - On iOS 14+ we finally have ways to request and check write-only access to the photo library via authorizationStatusForAccessLevel and requestAuthorizationForAccessLevel. These are missing from Kastri but are trivial to import, except for requestAuthorizationForAccessLevel which asks for a "void (^)(PHAuthorizationStatus status)" parameter as the handler. That thing looks scary.

In addition to allowing to change keyboard shortcuts, GExperts has the Uses Clause Manager which on the Identifier tab offers similar functionality as the Delphi Uses Helper. The UI is very different though, but it also finds partial matches (but not typos).

Rollo62: Yes, there is a way to see it like that. I can't think of another more theoretically pure place to put it, unless the datasources were all under some manager at the application level. But the fact is that both are declared in Data.DB, and TDataset already has a member variable of type FDataSources: TList<TDataSource> and property DataSource: TDataSource, used for setting indexes or something.