Leaderboard

I just published a new project in GitHub called WebView4Delphi. WebView4Delphi allows you to embed Chromium based web browsers in your Delphi or Lazarus applications using the WebView2 runtime. It uses the latest stable version of the WebView2 nuget package 1.0.1054.31. I used many of the tricks I learned creating CEF4Delphi and you will notice many similarities if you used it. I still have to write the documentation but you can build the available demos to see it working in VCL, FMX and Lazarus apps. There are a few things pending like the "windowless mode". It's being distributed with a simple MIT license so anyone can do whatever s/he wants with it. https://github.com/salvadordf/WebView4Delphi

Introducing "Uses Helper" - some little but incredibly helpful IDE plugin https://delphisorcery.blogspot.com/2021/03/introducing-delphi-uses-helper.html

Hi all, I'm pleased to announce the new release (v1.7.2) of the Sempare Template Engine. This release includes: NEW manage/unmanage methods for managing objects created while the template is being evaluated. Template Engine Playground enhancements (now using the Carbon theme, shows template evalution time in ms, extract variables form a template) json/map like variable support FIX removed caching of TRttiMethod to ensure virtual methods are supported correctly fixed regression of TValue type coercion Older release notes can be viewed on the releases page. Have fun.

HTML Office Library can do both.

I have created library for Delphi-Console-Applications Supports Windows 11 (and earlier from XE5?) Replaces CRT Unit - crt.pas Can be used to write modern and appealing console applications. Should allow older (legacy) source code (Borland Pascal 7.0) to run under Windows. Unicode-Support (including e.g. chinese characters) many more features - see GitHub https://github.com/playcom-de/Console I hope this is helpful for someone. Question, suggestions and error reports are welcome.

PyScripter, an Open Source, freely available Python IDE written in Delphi, has reached 1 million downloads from Sourceforge. This is in addition to many millions of downloads from its earlier home at the now defunct Google Code and an unknown number of downloads from other distribution channels. Historic note: The initial motivation was to build a good scripting solution for Delphi applications. About 20 years ago Microsoft was still promoting ActiveX scripting and Windows Script Engines (such as vbScript and jScript) as the way of building scripting solutions for Windows applications (one of many Microsoft technologies that was all but abandoned). At that time Python was relatively unknown, but it so happened that it was available as a Windows Script Engine and I looked into it. I loved the clean syntax, the expressiveness and conciseness of the language. Other things I liked were duck typing, batteries included, strong object orientation (everything is an object) etc.. The first iteration was an IDE (editor/debugger) for ActiveX Script Engines. But there were many bugs and limitations of Active Scripting both on the Microsoft/Windows side and the Python side. I then came across Python4Delphi which at the time was maintained by a Canadian developer Morgan Martinet. I started contributing to that project and later become its main maintainer, when Morgan's interested shifted to other things. I also developed a simple Python IDE which was named PyScripter and was originally distributed alongside Python4Delphi. There was very few Python IDEs available at the time and somehow the project became known in the Python community and instantly popular. For me, developing PyScripter was just a hobby, but I received a lot of encouragement and kept on improving it. I was also making some income from donations and Google AdSense. Both PyScripter and Python4Delphi were later moved to Google Code. Python popularity was steadily increasing and at the peak of PyScripter's popularity around 2010, there were hundreds of thousands of downloads the days following each new release. More recently as we all know Python became one of the most popular programming languages, but at the same time there was strong competition to PyScripter from freely available commercial grade IDE's such as Jetbrains PyCharm and Microsoft's Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. PyScripter was almost abandoned when Google Code closed down due to my frustration, but after a couple of years of inactivity the project was moved to Github and development resumed. Downloads are available through Sourceforge, since 2016. Through the years PyScripter has kept a large and loyal group of followers. I get many comments along the lines "I have tried VSCode, I have tried PyCharm, but I keep going back to PyScripter". PyScripter is also quite widely used in many Universities for introducing Python to students. And almost 20 years after its first release, PyScripter is still going strong...

PyScripter has reached 1.5 million downloads. This is just from Sourceforge and does not include downloads from Embarcadero, many other download sites and forks such as GuiPy. What is quite satisfying is that there is no country in the world without downloads. Greenland for instance, a vast country with a population of only 56000, has 7 downloads.

I first used interfaces via exported DLL functions. This was better than using many individual DLL functions, but still not very flexible. So I thought about how to implement the whole thing in a more general way. The result is this project. With AppCentral you can register interfaces in the host application or a DLL and get them in the host application or another DLL. The DLL can thereby also be written in C#, which is very practical, because you can connect various .NET libraries very well with Delphi. Example: Register an interface in Delphi type IAppDialogs = interface ['{EA3B37D8-5603-42A9-AC5D-5AC9C70E165C}'] procedure ShowMessage(const AMessage: WideString); safecall; end; TAppDialogs = class(TInterfacedObject, IAppDialogs) public procedure ShowMessage(const AMessage: WideString); safecall; end; implementation { TAppDialogs } procedure TAppDialogs.ShowMessage(const AMessage: WideString); begin Vcl.Dialogs.ShowMessage(AMessage); end; initialization TAppCentral.Reg<IAppDialogs>(TAppDialogs.Create); finalization TAppCentral.Unreg<IAppDialogs>; Fetch the interface in the host application or a DLL TAppCentral.Get<IAppDialogs>.ShowMessage('This is a message!'); // fetch directly, an exception will occur, if the interface is not registered yet Or in C# if (AppCentral.TryGet<IAppDialogs>(out IAppDialogs Dialogs)) { Dialogs.ShowMessage("Message from DLL: C# DLL registered!"); } The project can be downloaded here: https://github.com/jaenicke/appcentral Demo applications are included in source and in compiled form. I'll add a quick start manual soon.

Scalable. Useful for about boxes. Enjoy! Powered By Delphi 11.3 H150.svg

I created a simple demo project for mORMot web framework and Sempare Template Engine, both are the most powerful ones in their own catalogs, thus worth knowing how they can work together.

Hi all, I'm pleased to announce the new release (v1.7.0) of the Sempare Template Engine. It has been a while, and thought I'd just remind any users here about the project. Also included are some demos... for apps in general, there is a new helper class TTemplateRegistry, which should make things much easier to just get going and supports template reloading without restarting the app and can load templates from file, resources, or custom a loader. This takes some of the grunt work out of working with templates, besides just using them. More information is available in the docs on the repo. Some simple examples are provided to illustrate server side scripting. If you have any suggestions, or see any gaps, please feel free to provide comments on the issue tracker. - Demo using the Horse framework - Demo using WebBroker standalone console app New features: - improved support for comments - extends/block template support - improved whitespace removal - renamed demo app to Sempare Template Engine Playground - a useful tool for testing language features / templates. - added the Sempare.Template.RCGenerator project to help with creating resource rc files by scanning directories. - support multiple statements in a script block. e.g. <% print('a'); print('b') %> - additional context configuration - improved docs (improved navigation and added railroad diagrams to illustrate the grammar) Older release notes can be viewed on the releases page. Have fun.

Just an excerpt from the mormot2 tests (win32, win64 numbers look similar) running on an i7-12700 10.4.2 - Custom RTL: 297,648 assertions passed 285.77ms FillChar in 9.37ms, 41.4 GB/s Move in 22.25ms, 14 GB/s small Move in 25.05ms, 4.3 GB/s big Move in 25.06ms, 15.5 GB/s FillCharFast in 8.21ms, 47.3 GB/s MoveFast in 42.99ms, 7.2 GB/s small MoveFast in 17.15ms, 6.3 GB/s big MoveFast in 26.59ms, 14.6 GB/s 11.3 - Custom RTL: 297,648 assertions passed 247.86ms FillChar in 6.37ms, 60.9 GB/s Move in 10.10ms, 30.9 GB/s small Move in 17.98ms, 6 GB/s big Move in 14.77ms, 26.4 GB/s FillCharFast in 7.37ms, 52.6 GB/s MoveFast in 42.76ms, 7.3 GB/s small MoveFast in 16.83ms, 6.5 GB/s big MoveFast in 27.69ms, 14.1 GB/s The first 4 are RTL functions, last 4 are mormot implementations. Take this with a grain of salt though as these are just unit tests and not a performance benchmark but it gives a little idea. FillChar has already been improved by me for 11.1 and Move will be in 11.3 (along with other improvements in the core RTL) No, this is not suddenly making your applications twice as fast but solves the old complaints of FillChar and Move being sooo slow. 😉

https://delphisorcery.blogspot.com/2021/04/testinsight-12-released.html

Many of us miss call stacks in Delphi and have to use heavy or commercial libs. Luckily Microsoft cares of us and provides necessary API's. Here's the unit // Stack tracing with WinAPI // (c) Fr0sT-Brutal // License MIT unit StackTrace; interface {$IFDEF MSWINDOWS} uses Windows, SysUtils; const DBG_STACK_LENGTH = 32; type TDbgInfoStack = array[0..DBG_STACK_LENGTH - 1] of Pointer; PDbgInfoStack = ^TDbgInfoStack; function RtlCaptureStackBackTrace(FramesToSkip: ULONG; FramesToCapture: ULONG; BackTrace: Pointer; BackTraceHash: PULONG): USHORT; stdcall; external 'kernel32.dll'; procedure GetCallStackOS(var Stack: TDbgInfoStack; FramesToSkip: Integer); function CallStackToStr(const Stack: TDbgInfoStack): string; procedure InstallExceptionCallStack; {$ENDIF} implementation {$IFDEF MSWINDOWS} procedure GetCallStackOS(var Stack: TDbgInfoStack; FramesToSkip: Integer); begin ZeroMemory(@Stack, SizeOf(Stack)); RtlCaptureStackBackTrace(FramesToSkip, Length(Stack), @Stack, nil); end; function CallStackToStr(const Stack: TDbgInfoStack): string; var Ptr: Pointer; begin Result := ''; for Ptr in Stack do if Ptr <> nil then Result := Result + sLineBreak + Format('$%p', [Ptr]) else Break; end; function GetExceptionStackInfo(P: PExceptionRecord): Pointer; begin Result := AllocMem(SizeOf(TDbgInfoStack)); GetCallStackOS(PDbgInfoStack(Result)^, 1); // excluding the very function GetCallStackOS end; function GetStackInfoStringProc(Info: Pointer): string; begin Result := CallStackToStr(PDbgInfoStack(Info)^); end; procedure CleanUpStackInfoProc(Info: Pointer); begin Dispose(PDbgInfoStack(Info)); end; procedure InstallExceptionCallStack; begin Exception.GetExceptionStackInfoProc := GetExceptionStackInfo; Exception.GetStackInfoStringProc := GetStackInfoStringProc; Exception.CleanUpStackInfoProc := CleanUpStackInfoProc; end; procedure UninstallExceptionCallStack; begin Exception.GetExceptionStackInfoProc := nil; Exception.GetStackInfoStringProc := nil; Exception.CleanUpStackInfoProc := nil; end; {$ENDIF} end. test project program Project2; {$APPTYPE CONSOLE} {$R *.res} uses Windows, SysUtils, StackTrace in 'StackTrace.pas'; // Demo subs procedure Nested2; begin Abort; end; procedure Nested1; begin Nested2; end; procedure Nested0; begin Nested1; end; begin try InstallExceptionCallStack; Nested0; except on E: Exception do Writeln(E.ClassName, ': ', E.Message, sLineBreak, E.StackTrace); end; Readln; end. and output

The whole thing started with this topic. Due to lack of possibilities, I wrote my own update mechanism which noes not rely on any advanced stuff but still should be versatile enough. Since the initial version TAEUpdater got some improvements and things are looking great. Some more stuff was implemented like hash-based verification, messages, E-tag caching, separate internal, development and production channels, ability to downgrade to a previous version, etc. I'm running it in my main application for a while and it seems to do the job correctly. Since not all of us might update from an unauthenticated web server, now 3 different file providers are shipped: HTTP, flatfile and custom. HTTP uses Delphi's TNetHTTPClient, flatfile reads the files from a local disk and custom has all necessary events exposed via events. I also got rid of some personal dependencies (like compressing the update file or using System.Zip2) and now everything is handed to the user for the solution to be more... generic. I still use my own version discovery and comparison method to be able to determine which published one is "newer" but that is going to be my next step. As a workaround, you can call .LoadUpdateFile, check the new version in each ActualProduct.Files and call .Update manually. What it needs: - An update file containing the product, all its files and versions. You can build this with TAEUpdateFile.SaveToStream in AE.Updater.UpdateFile.pas - Update packages, which can be zipped or encrypted, on FTP, HTTP, custom protocol - doesn't matter as events should be in place for performing all these actions Plans for the future: - Getting rid of more dependencies, maybe it'll become a standalone updater package with no extras - By accomplishing the above the code will get closer and closer to be truly cross-platform (atm it's WIndows only) - Get rid of modern stuff (like generics) and implement proper versioning conditionals so the package can be compiled and installed on anything other than D11.2 - Really, really basic documentation on how to use... Disclaimer: further changes are on their way. I'll possibly add / remove events / splitting the component in multiple subcomponents which might make existing .DFMs failing to be streamed. Also, publish your new versions on the Internal channel if I might break the core functionality 😞 All words as one - I just wanted to give the existing Delphi community a chance to implement auto-updating feature to their applications without having to pay for the component or the backend. Feel free to check it out. And suggest ways of improvement of course 🙂

LOL. Probably you should show them SysUtils and see how they'll try to avoid that unit 😄 The post you linked to was mine 🙂 and yep, the code is mine, I just didn't bother to add © for these few lines. Anyway these functions are slightly improved, fully translated to English and contained in the unit I linked above. You can extract the necessary parts to your unit

You're right for sure, that's why I recently implemented MAP file reading and extracting all the info available for any given address. Besides some tricky aspects, that wasn't too hard. I merged that with built-in stack traces and now I have fully detailed traces with module, function name and LOC. Alas, the code requires some other my routines which are not fully ready for publishing yet (translate & add comments etc). But in case someone is interested I could try to switch to built-in routines

My dad has release his program after decades of working on it in his spare time. I'm not so good at all this stuff so please excuse my ignorance I just believe his translator deserves some feedback and attention. If you would like to download or find out more he created a community on reddit under the title name. Thank you for your time please delete if not allowed.

A few months ago I replaced all RTL collections (apart from TStringList) with spring4d 2.0 collections and I saw noticeably smaller binaries (exe/bpl) and faster overall application performance. Spring4D collections are just so much nicer to use, being interface based is a plus for me, and the LINQ like functionality makes it really easy to do sorting, filtering, projections etc - if only Delphi had lambdas so the predicates etc were not so damned verbose! I'm extremely thankful for the work @Stefan Glienke has put into Spring4D 👍