dummzeuch

You keep asking questions that are not really related to Delphi programming. Answer to this one: By buying a software like MapInfo. Please note that I'll ignore any further question related to this topic.

Reading shape files is not difficult. The format is documented and I personally wrote a unit u_dzShapeFileReader for reading them which is part of my dzlib library. There is even a simple test program ShapeFileReader that uses this to display such files (but not on a sphere, it simply takes the coordinates as they are without any projection). But you will still need to know which coordinate system that data uses (WGS 84 would be my guess, but I don't know for sure) project these coordinates on a sphere and display that three dimensional sphere on a two dimensional display as everybody has already been telling you in various topics already. You seem to want a library that does everything you need. If you are willing to pay for it, maybe TMS FNC Map is a possible solution, but I don't know for sure, because I never used that. And I seem to remember that they don't provide any coordinate conversion. But even assuming that this library can help you for parts of the code, this is a far from simple task. Expect to spend many days (or probably more like months) on it. Maybe there are better tools / libraries for other programming environments than Delphi. I wouldn't know.

Also, "enable runtime themes" must be enabled in the project options (in Delphi 2007, no idea what it's called later), but that's the default. I know that because I usually disable this option so I can set colors as I want rather than having them overridden by Windows, so the cue banner didn't work in this case.

No idea. I'd assume that the data contains the information for doing this, but it will be up to you to draw the actual graphics. So basically the process is: read a data point from the data convert the coordinates from whatever coordinate system it uses to the one you need for drawing draw a circle + an arrow in the right direction and length + the number I can't really help you there any more because I neither know the data format nor have I ever drawn a map on a sphere.

But the data format is known/documented? There must be some kind of coordinates in there, probably in WGS84.

That shortcut is assigned to an action with the name ViewSwapSourceFormCommand and the caption "&View as Text" but you are right, there doesn't seem to be any menu entry for it so there is currently now way to change that shortcut. If you want to, you can probably write your own expert that retrieves that action from the IDE and changes the shortcut. Code for retrieving these actions can be found in the GExperts Keyboard Shortcuts expert. Or you could extend that expert to allow changing the shortcuts in addition to displaying them. There is even a feature request for that already.

These two experts were a contribution from somebody and I didn't check for conflicting shortcuts -> my fault. You have two options: Assign different shortcuts (If you have got a suggestion what to use, tell me,) Disable these experts As for changing the functionality depending on the focus: Once you have used it once, the editor window has the focus, so how could the software know what you want? But anyway: GExperts can either use the shortcuts or not, there is no way that I know of to pass them on to the IDE.

Prompted by a post on Delphi Praxis, I just added a new feature to the Expert Manager expert in GExperts (lots of experts here 😉) : It can now change the order in which the experts are loaded into the IDE. read on in the blog post

I have just finished fixing all known bugs in the GExperts code formatter that were related to Generics. On top of that I fixed a few others. I am sure there are still more though, but because I rarely use Generics I haven’t seen them yet. So I need your help: If you have a lot of source code with Generics, please compile a new DLL and try the formatter on that code. Report any bugs on SourceForge.

Yeah, I haven't updated the plug-in for a while. I'll put that on my to-do list. Thanks for reminding me. edit: Done. I also updated dzBdsLauncher to support Delphi 11.1 and 11.2

Not quite what you are asking for: Delphi Help Expert

Just in case anybody is still interested: The GExperts Experts Manager expert now allows to change the order of the entries in the registry. Note1: You have to compile it from sources to get this functionality. Note2: Don't forget to actually save the changes to the registry. It's no longer done automatically. Note3: This is work in progress, there might still be bugs.

Just thought I'd mention it: Embarcadero Germany has always been very helpful when any issues arose with some strange (if not to say illegal in Germany) policies from Embarcadero. They also helped converting Named User licenses to Network Named User licenses, which is possible as long as you have got maintenance and solves the activation count issue once and for all, because you then host your licenses on premises and don't need Embarcadero's servers any more.

OK, I have apparently misunderstood the question. It is about IDE experts, not about the Experts in GExperts. Yes, these are loaded in the order they are written in the Registry. It would be possible for the Experts Manager to read all entries, delete them and then write them back in the desired order.

The main reason for me to not seriously consider Lazarus was the debugger. It sucks. Now there apparently is a new one, so I should probably give it another try.

Uwe Raabe blogged about the change regarding the TForm.OldCreateOrder property in Delphi 11: It deletes existing entries from the dfm files. While that isn't a problem if you exclusively use Delphi 11, it breaks backward compatibility with older versions. These older versions always set OldCreateOrder to False for new forms but assumed it to be True, if it doesn't exist. Once you open a form in Delphi 11 and save it, older Delphi versions will see that OldCreateOrder is missing and assume it to be True even though it was set to false before Delphi 11 removed it. That has been a major stumbling stone for keeping GExperts forms backwards compatible. I always have to check the dfms before committing them to prevent disaster as some forms were using both Create and FormCreate to initialize the forms (yes that's a bad idea) and were of course expecting Create to be finished before FormCreate was called. That was the default for all Delphi versions since at least Delphi 5. But if you set OldCreateOrder to True, this is no longer the case and bad things happened. I hope I have fixed all occurrences of this in GExperts. But actually I would like to fix this annoying behavior. Is there a way to add OldCreateOrder=False back to the dfms when the form is being saved? Simliar to removing the also annoying ExplicitXxx entries? If you have an idea how to implement this, please let me know. Mein Dank wird Dir ewig nachschleichen(*1). And I'm sure I'm not alone with that. (Literally: "My thanks will forever creep after you" but simply meaning "I'll forever be thankful to you".)

What's the problem with initializing child controls in the constructor?

IIRC the experts are created in the order in which they are registered which basically means in the order of the units in the project. And I think I "recently" changed that order to be more or less alphabetic. (for a suitable meaning of "recently") I'm not quite sure what you want to achieve. You can configure any hotkey in GExperts to your liking. I am not aware of any conflicts, if there are any (in the default configuration), please file a bug report.

They should, but only for their own code. But don't forget: They are in stalling quite a bunch of 3rd party components e.g. to support all those new fangled platforms. If Google or Apple say their SDK requires Windows 10, how can Embarcadero say, Delphi will not?

I actually still have got a Windows 8.1 installation (VM) around and I don't plan to update it to 10 ever. But that's not because I am a big fan of Windows 8, I just don't want to break a currently working environment. I'm not sure whether I want to try installing Delphi 11.2 on it though - because "working environment", you know.

Are you sure these are actual downloads? Maybe the installer treats reading from the ISO as "download".

It has been included in GExperts now. But to get it for now you will have to compile your own DLL.

Of course you could always assign a hotkey that is not yet used anywhere else. Unfortunately hotkeys have become a scarce resource and since the IDE does not provide any function to read which ones are already in use, there is no way to find out for sure. That's why I added the Editor Popup Menu expert which at least for me reduces the need for hotkeys at in GExperts. Unfortunately I also chose Ctrl+H as the default hotkey for that one, which is already taken by the Replace function of the editor. 😞

I have always wondered what determines which function of a hotkey gets precedence when there are multiple ones. I found that opening the GExperts configuration dialog and leaving it with OK makes the GExperts hotkeys take precedence for a while but not for the whole session. For editor hotkeys there is also the order of entries in the "Enhancement Modules" list of the Editor Options -> Key Mappings page. Unfortunately the help doesn't really say what effect the order has got, only that they override the hotkeys in the Key Mapping Modules listed on the left.

Did you compile the runtime package first?