Paul Dardeau

Hi @Patrick PREMARTIN Thank you for a very helpful reply. The product I'm building is targeted for non-developers (SQLite end users).

You're absolutely correct that how the product was developed is of no concern to potential customers! It is of concern to me though! Thank you for the link to the reddit thread. I will have a look through it. I'm sure it has helpful suggestions. Probably the better question I should have asked is this -- "To all vendors of applications made with Delphi -- if you could give advice to your former self (when you were at the stage that I'm at now), what would you say? What is it that you wish you would have known then?"

I sent the following email to the Ian (developer evangelist) at Embarcadero but never got a reply. Thought I'd ask the same here. I have created a Windows application in Delphi (VCL) to do data analysis of SQLite databases. The software is geared towards non-technical and slightly technical users (may or may not know anything about SQL). I just put my installer up on Google Drive today to share with my initial testers. The software doesn't have a name yet and I haven't decided on my company name yet either. I'm still torn on whether to make it open source or closed source. Similarly, I don't know what my pricing would be yet. Do you have any general suggestions or recommendations for brand new Delphi software vendors who are at this stage of development? Thanks!

You might want to try username 'SYSDBA' and password 'masterkey'. I don't know for sure if it will work but it's worth a try.

Hi, I know nothing about FMX (except that it exists) and would like to learn a little about it. At this point in time, I'm only interested in learning how to make a cross-platform desktop application (windows/macos/linux). My existing Delphi knowledge is completely VCL oriented. Any recommended resources? Thanks!

Thank you all for the very helpful comments. I really appreciate it! I don't have a single FreeAndNil in my project because I didn't know about it prior to the youtube livestream. I do have many places in my code where an object variable will have long lifetimes and will need to be reused. In those cases, I have this: FMyObject.Free; FMyObject := nil; Should I go back and change those 2 statements to the single call FreeAndNil? FreeAndNil(FMyObject);

Embarcadero hosted a youtube livestream the other day with MVPs. It was a debate on use of FreeAndNil. Being new to Delphi, I don't have any historical baggage (well, I do; but not on this particular topic) or preconceived notions of how it should be done. I was disappointed that the video didn't at least include a "if you're brand new to delphi, here's our recommendations on the use of FreeAndNil". Having said all that, can you suggest some best practices for someone who's new to Delphi on good use of FreeAndNil?

Not currently.

Thank you! Much appreciated!

Thanks Anders! I appreciate the detailed suggestions. I will make all the stylistic and quick/easy changes you suggested. No, that thought never occurred to me! What type of control would you suggest for the handles?

Hi, I needed a mechanism for moveable and resizeable VCL labels and couldn't find exactly what I wanted so I wrote it. Link to github public repository: https://github.com/pauldardeau/delphi-sizeable-label I'm not new to programming, but I am new to Delphi and Windows customized UI controls. You will likely find strange or odd styles in my code as a result. I welcome any and all suggestions for improvement. Screen capture showing it in action:

Here is the link to my code in a public github repository: https://github.com/pauldardeau/delphi-sizeable-label I am not new to programming, but I am new to Delphi and Windows UI customizations. Don't be surprised to see anything in the code that doesn't follow best practices. I welcome any and all suggestions for improvement. Attached you can see it in action.

Thank you to everyone who provided suggestions! I have a working prototype that provides the desired functionality. I created a custom control (TSizeableLabel derived from TCustomControl) that "wraps" a TLabel. The TLabel is passed as an argument to TSizeableLabel's constructor and TSizeableLabel makes itself the parent of the label. It also makes it's size just a little bit bigger than the size of the label. The extra size is to accommodate the 8 size handles that are drawn to enable resizing. I'm planning to put my prototype in a public github repo soon.

Giving up? Au contraire! I'm just getting started! 😀 I suspect that my initial post may have agitated you since you thought I was giving up without trying. Sorry for that (if that's the case). I did try playing with various snippets of code I had found and had the 'move' functionality done in a matter of minutes. As you say, the resizing is more involved. I started with the question because I'd like to leverage best practices and not waste time going down a rabbit hole unnecessarily. I'm not opposed to doing that when required (and I do like the learning aspects of doing that).

The first link that I examined is this: https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-move-and-resize-controls-at-run-time-4092542 It uses a non-standard way for the user to resize the control. The user must hold shift key to resize. The article concludes by saying that you might want to add 8 sizing handles. It gives no code or tips on how to do that. I then looked at these: https://tips.delphidabbler.com/tips/92 https://tips.delphidabbler.com/tips/93 There are no images to show what it looks like and very little explanation. I'm not new to programming, but I am new to Delphi and specialized Windows UI custom code. I looked at this thread: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/813693/how-to-draw-on-a-tpanel I saw someone mention about using Raize Components (TRzPanel in particular). Great! I google search "Raize Components" and it appears they (Raize) no longer offer those components for sale. In same thread, someone mentions to use TMS TAdvPanel (part of their VCL Components). I search for documentation about TAdvPanel and I can only see basic documentation. This thread and some of the others do have code, but few comments or discussion about the code. Part of the reason I was drawn to Delphi is the 'Rapid' part of application development. If I have to spent a lot of time figuring out old code to do something that seems relatively common, that goes against the grain of rapid development (in my opinion). One of the things I was hoping to hear from others in this forum post are things like "I've used 3rd party component X and it worked great" or "I built my own by subclassing Y and adding functionality Z". I find comments like "Let me teach you a trick: <google search links>" to be condescending. I introduced myself by saying that I'm new to Delphi.