Fr0sT.Brutal

If time is a factor, these methods surely must avoid checks of init state. Yep, sometimes I'm swearing but mostly dealing with somebody's code; I'm pretty sure I'll be swearing on classes designed with your approach 😛 For me: c-tor arguments should contain crucial values that need to be set and perform some init actions so that other methods are sure the things are ready for work and they won't have to check stuff every time. You can't forget to call c-tor but you easily can forget to call separate .Init method.

This protocol is deprecated long ago. TLS1.2 is minimal actual protocol now

Generally, I don't like this approach. It moves rejection point to some another (probably random) place, requires validation in every method and allows invalid values to exist between creation and validation. However, there could be cases where this way is the most logical. F.ex., I have file writer class that could utilize multiple files during its lifetime because of rotation or file pattern change. So c-tor only sets basic properties and Open method opens a file, probably raising an exception on failure.

Sorry, I can't write it for you - don't avoid learning REs. They're not so scary as they look and you likely need them at some moment.

Yes use REs here. Something like Search: ^Name(.+) .+ [(.+)]$ Replace: My Name $1 [1963-$2] (typed right from my head, bugs possible)

Any c-tor could raise an exception if there's not enough memory. So IMHO scheme foo := TFoo.Create; try ... finally FreeAndNil(foo); end is OK. Otherwise you'll get "Variable might be uninit-ed" warning. Of course you can wrap this clause in external try-catch to handle an exception internally (default behavior is call Application.HandleException method) Regarding the ability to raise itself, yes, there's no helpers in the language. Sometimes I dream of something like Java's "throws" clause.

Yes, that's the right way. However, you should always remember where it's applicable and where not. F.i., HTTP, FTP, Telnet require exactly CRLF while x-platform log files are optimal with CR only (viewable and processable on both *nix an Win - except with dumb Notepad - as *nix dislikes CRLFs).

@Dany Marmur you're welcome 🙂 this is possible for any opensource project written in C/C++. I only did this because I hate too much DLLs in my app and to avoid additional dependencies but I could easily imagine how somebody suffers if he needs 2-3 3rd party libs that use different VCR version each.

From what I've read, they don't support HTTP/2 between Nginx and backend server but your need is to convert HTTP/2 to HTTP/1 which is totally fine and supported AFAIU

Hmm, named constant with clear Carriage-Return&Line-Feed name is less explicit than a magic constant literal? I disagree here. The only advantage of literal is highlight in editor. This is OK for unification. I'd advice not doing this. Side note: it took me some time to realize the difference between "Line break" (aka "New line" or "End of line" sign) and "CRLF" which are the same on Windows but not on other OS's. EOL is OS-dependent and CRLF is constant.

Nope. I built FB client with "STATIC" argument so MSVCR is compiled into resulting DLL. Zero DLL mess, maximal happiness :). Million times I suggested authors to distribute static versions as well but they still insist that "updating VCR libs are important security requirement".

Why not just take fbclient.dll together with your app? I also use custom static build of client that doesn't require external MSVCR crap

I'm afraid we all should accept that HTTP/2,3,4,whatever will appear deprecating good old simple HTTP with something overcomplicated. Probably a reverse proxy like Nginx before your server could help?

From my own experience, this could vary very widely, from just recompile to 1-2 months of rewriting and hunting subtle bugs. F.ex., I converted EhLib 2.x in about several hours but SimpleXML took about a week. All this depends on how clean and correct the code is written.

Derive Notes and Books from common generic class that is child of TObjectList with all the common methods you want

Yep you're right. However, there's too much of JS-ism.

I'd additionally untie processing class from UI listview item completely. Processor just doesn't need to know about UI (unless it deals with it directly, like bg rendering or similar - but here it's not the case I suppose).

I guess it's time to call an exorcist as your app was cursed. Jokes aside: try to comment out parts of the proc to achieve stable behavior without SO. Then examine what's wrong in commented lines

// Return child form of a given class. Create new form if not in Components list yet function TfrmMDIMain.GetChildForm(ChildFormClass: TFormClass): TForm; var i: Integer; begin // Seach by class // Not via MDIChildren because there are non-MDI as well (frmReport) for i := 0 to ComponentCount - 1 do if Components[i] is ChildFormClass then begin Result := TForm(Components[i]); Exit; end; // create new if not found. Owner is set so child form is destroyed automatically on close Result := ChildFormClass.Create(Self); end; // Sample usage - specific init procedure TfrmMDIMain.NPersonsIndexClick(Sender: TObject); begin with TfrmPersons(GetChildForm(TfrmPersons)) do begin SetPersonType(TPersonType(-1)); BringToFront; end; end; // Sample usage - no explicit init procedure TfrmMDIMain.NSpecsIndexClick(Sender: TObject); begin GetChildForm(TfrmSpecs).BringToFront; end; Here's how I do it in my MDI app (DB client with several UIs for table editing). Note that there could be only one form of a particular class. Also closed forms remain in memory thus consuming resources - not an issue in my case but a subject to note. As for modal windows, I don't bother excess lines and just use procedure TfrmMDIMain.NImportClick(Sender: TObject); begin with TfrmImport.Create(nil) do try ShowModal; finally Free; end; end; I also extend TForm class with some customizations and derive child forms from it without the need to install this as component by magic type override trick: // Form with common actions on create and close: save/restore size, ctx help, zoom etc TCustomMDIChildForm = class(TForm) procedure DoCreate; override; procedure DoClose(var Action: TCloseAction); override; end; and FormSmth.pas: // magic! TForm = TCustomMDIChildForm; TfrmSmth= class(TForm) ... end;

I have plenty of similar constructions in my DB app to edit some tables. So init is fully contained in form c-tor/design props/onShow, changes are applied internally and result is not important.

However, I think I learned how to cook VTV pretty well 🙂

I doubt it could be reliably done automatically. But as a quick variant - find some tool for face recognition (OpenCV maybe), then just divide found rect to, say, 4 parts and remove one of them.

VTV and stock components. EhLib for DB apps. Actually I do no much of GUI though.

Never used it and never wanted to

Don't forget codec licenses and patents. GIF was very nice (animation in 90s!) but virtually failed for application in software because of dumb patents. So it's wise to choose opensource formats.