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Currently, SSL/TLS certificates may be issued for a maximum period of 398 days, before renewal is required. The CA/Browser Forum recently voted to reduce this life span period in steps over the next four years. From 15th March 2026, life span is reduced to 200 days. From 15th March 2027, life span is reduced to 100 days. From 15th March 2029, life span is reduced to 47 days, but only 10 days for domain control validated certificates, such as most free certificates. These reduced life times reduce the effort needed to block compromised certificates, but also make manually updating server certificates more onerous. The Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) developed by Let's Encrypt and used by many web servers, is now supported by other certificate vendors to issue free and commercial certificates automatically, and will hopefully be fully integrated with all major web servers by 2029. Let's Encrypt is adding a certificate profile to the ordering process, allowing alternate certificate types to be ordered, including six day life certificates later this year. It has also added a ACME command to get recommended renewal information, which is currently 30 days before a 90 day certificate expires. Applications are recommended to check renewal information regularly, currently every six hours, to check if certificates have been revoked. This will be important this summer when Let's Encrypt closes down the Online Certificate Status Protocol currently used to check if certificates are validly issued. A new version of the ICS TSslX509Certs component is currently being tested with these new ACME features, it will also attempt to support ordering certificates from Bypass, ZeroSSL, Google, DigiCert and ssl.com, although these most of these need accounts to be opened at the issuer before the ACME protocol can be used, so testing will not be quick and not all may be available initially. The main difference from Let's Encrypt is external accounting fields to link to the supplier's account, instead of just a public key. Minor changes to IcsHosts are needed for the ICS web server to handle certificate profiles and alternate suppliers, and to regularly update renewal information. These changes are already done in the OverbyteIcsX509CertsTst sample that is used to create ACME accounts and place certificate orders, that can be validated by an internal web server, external web servers such as Windows IIS and Windows Apache, and by Windows DNS server for wild card certificates. The sample supports multiple accounts for different suppliers, listing the status of all orders for those suppliers, and allowing ordering and renewals with a few clicks. I'll update this topic when the ICS web server is updated, hopefully within a week or two, meanwhile could anyone that has looked at alternate ACME suppliers let me know, to help with testing. Angus

Hi everyone, I wanted to share some practical benchmark results from testing Delphi 12.3 under Parallels Desktop (Windows 11 ARM) on my new Mac Studio M4 Max. I'm working on a large ERP project (around 1 million lines of code) using components from Fast Report, TMS Software, and DevExpress. Here’s a direct comparison between three systems I’ve tested: Build config Intel i5-12500 (Win11, 32 GB) Mac Mini M4 Pro (24 GB) Mac Studio M4 Max (36 GB) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win64 Clean + Build 32 sec 26 sec 24 sec Win64 Clean + Compile 21 sec 18 sec 17 sec Win32 Clean + Build 23 sec 19 sec 17 sec Win32 Clean + Compile 16 sec 14 sec 13 sec All tests were run in Parallels Desktop 20, with each Mac VM configured optimally (RAM and CPU cores adjusted per machine). The Intel system was running native Windows 11 Pro with 32 GB RAM. Windows 11 ARM inside Parallels ran Delphi 12.3 without any issues. Key impressions: Mac Studio M4 Max delivers excellent performance even under virtualization. Parallels Desktop is extremely stable — no issues with Firebird or IBExpert either. For large Delphi projects, it’s a very viable setup for professional development. Best regards, Bojan

Seems that this issue was resolved with this patch: https://blogs.embarcadero.com/rad-studio-12-3-april-patch-available/ SInce yesterday it was available on Getit and now also in the EMB portal.

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/

The PegTop track and range bars are quite nice and easy to use: https://www.pegtop.net/delphi/components/common/screenshots.htm ...and there's couple in the SO post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4387690/component-similar-to-trackbar-to-enter-a-range-of-values ...and if you can wait a week or so I will be releasing one of my own (based on Graphics32 though). I have the track bar part completed so I'm starting on the range bar part now. DevExpress also has a range bar and I believe TMS has one too. Personally, if I weren't writing my own 🙂, I would go for the PegTop range bar; I have used it with success in many projects.

My Styled Dialogs uses internally my StyledButtons that are full VCL Styles compatible. You can also use dialogs with animations using Skia4Delphi: https://ethea.it/docs/styledcomponents/TStyledTaskDialog.html

FYI: https://probablydance.com/2018/06/16/fibonacci-hashing-the-optimization-that-the-world-forgot-or-a-better-alternative-to-integer-modulo/ -tee-

OK, so after a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I've come up with something more simplified - hopefully as much as possible. The attached code is just for iOS, however hopefully it meets these basic requirements: Requests permissions that allow creation of an album that can be accessed by the app If permissions are too limited, or denied, prompts the user to change the app settings, which is the only way to make subsequent changes if the permissions are not granted. If the prompt is declined, a value is set in the user defaults, so that the user is not prompted again. If they wanted to grant access again later, either this would need to be coded in the app, or they would need to do a manual change Once permissions are granted, the Create/Find Album button becomes enabled, and clicking that either locates the existing album, or fires off a change request to add the album Once the album has been created or found, the Save Image button becomes enabled. Tapping it fires off a request to save the image in the TImage component to the album Notes: The attached demo does not have any dependencies other than what comes with Delphi, and the units provided with it. It contains a "re-import" of the Photos framework with the newer classes, methods etc. It assumes that the device has iOS 14+, so the code would need to be modified to support older versions Feel free to ask about whatever I may have missed 🙂 The plan is to eventually update Kastri with the new import, and include some of the code in the demo as well. SaveImageDemo.zip

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?

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!

Few notes. First, when using free AI variants, your code will end up in the AI training data. And I wouldn't trust paid versions either. You need to be very careful that you don't give AI access to sensitive code that contains data which should not end up there. It is also very easy to do that by accident and it is prudent to run AI interactions in restricted environment like VM where you will have only non sensitive code. Next, anything that AI gives out needs to be carefully reviewed by human. AI often hallucinates and sometimes those hallucinations are not as obvious. This is especially important for code which requires some detailed explanations about how it works and why or some reasoning only person who wrote the code can answer (or the reasons are written in some other documents like specifications or design). Similar goes to writing tests with AI help. One of the huge problems with AI usage, is that with time, reviewing its output becomes a mundane task and this is where mistakes can more easily creep in.

I'm apparently not getting the message through; There is nothing special required, by neither the source nor the destination, in order to support copy/paste of files via RDP. The RDP support is transparent. If your remote application copies data onto the clipboard in the FileContents & FileGroupDescriptor formats, then the local destination will be able to paste it. Waitamoment.. I just realized that you just used remote desktop as an example. You will not actually be using remote desktop. Is that correct? So you are actually just asking how remote desktop makes the remote clipboard available to the client and how to replicate that functionality in your own client/server system. Well, I don't know the exact details of how it's done but I know enough about the clipboard and dragdrop that I can guess. On the server, the RDP host monitors the clipboard (there's an API for that). When data is copied onto the clipboard, in one of the formats supported by RDP, the server sends a message to the client with the meta data (data formats, size, etc.) of the clipboard data. On the client, the RDP client receives the message and copies the (meta) data onto the local clipboard using an IDataObject interface. On the client, some application pastes from the clipboard... The local clipboard asks the local data source, via the IDataObject interface, for the data. The local RDP receives the data request on its IDataObject interface and forwards this request to the remote RDP server. The remote RDP server in turn does the same: It asks the remote clipboard for the data, the remote clipboard asks the remote data source (whoever copied the data onto the clipboard in the first place), etc. Once the remote RDP server has the data it sends it back to the local RDP client which then supplies it, through the IDataObject, to the local application. Done. Paste complete. A normal paste can cause data to be sent back, through IDataObject, notifying the source about the paste. I don't know if RDP propagates this information all the way back to the server.

A image showing what "rendered incorrectly" looks like would make it a lot easier to confirm reproduction.

You must set the height of the memo with alBottom. Everything else will adjust automatically (unless the splitter acts up then it will be moved above the memo with alClient 😞 in that case you can hopefully set the splitter's top position to move it back between the memos where it belongs).

You are not going to get a notification if you use startActivity(), you need to use startActivityForResult().

Yes. It was a bit surprised that, when CnPack published the Chinese Translation, advwang mentioned he had reported the issue (RSP-20624) back in 2018. The issue was closed as 'Work as Designed', with a suggestion to add a warning in cases of potential data loss. He also said Eurekalog 7.0 used this approach in their shellcode but fixed with byte array later. btw. I added this paragraph to the introduction: and improve the Conclusion section: Revisiting the Original Program section:

I forgot to mention that, in the original case, the proper solution is to use a byte array —I’d assumed this was common knowledge, but I should have spelled it out. As I wrote at the beginning: I simply documented the journey, shared it, and hope it helps someone. At the very least, the exercise deepened my understanding of character encoding and how dcc handles string literals. In the end, it’s just an article. If you skimmed it, read the conclusion, and found nothing useful -- no worries, and thanks for taking a look.

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.....

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).

But we have Vibe Coding now!

Except carrying the rig around. *SCNR*

I would go back to Vista or Win 7 in blink of an eye. I would be thrilled if I could have stayed on Win 10, too. Windows 11 is by far the worst Windows version ever (and I could not believe this was possible after Windows 8). There are zero new features I want to have and they messed up everything else. For start half of the things no longer cannot be configured. Taskbar height is too big, colors and icons are awful, Windows theme even worse (selection colors, checkboxes, and similar), you need ten clicks more to do things, fonts are total nightmare and cannot be uninstalled. Whoever designed that Cascadia Mono font needs to be tarred and feathered. It is absolutely illegible and half of the websites are using is as the default monospace font. And this is just scratching the surface...

For Delphi / RAD Studio version 12.3, the original solution provided by Jim:  C:\> getitcmd -i=fmxlinux-12-1.78 works "out of the box" with no issues !! ( --> no "patch" needed as in 12.2 ) You can use this solution to get "FMX Linux" until they reach a final agreement with Kryukov's state ...