Yaron

As part of a new feature I'm working on, I wrote functions to browse and get streaming URLs for the Top-3 popular media servers (Plex, Emby and Jellyfin) through an easy to use abstraction layer. I open-sourced the code here: https://github.com/bLightZP/Zoom-Player-emby-jellyfin-client-plugin/tree/main

My media player is using a skinned window with no title and is written in Delphi 7. I am not sure if it's the Delphi 7 or the skinned form, but Window's snap to zone when dragging the window to the edge of the screen doesn't trigger automatically. Does anyone know if there is a manual way to trigger it (cause the transparent overlay showing the new layout while dragging the window to appear)?

Yes, I'm aware, but Delphi is so slow under android that I wrote most of the UI code myself using bitmaps (and optimized the bitmap code too).

I previously discussed the issue of not being able to upgrade my app to support the latest Android SDK because I haven't been making enough money on Android development to justify upgrading Delphi beyond v10.3. My app is very simple, so I was thinking I may find a "compilation" partner that would just compile the source code for me on the latest version of Delphi. Does that pose any licensing issues? I mean you're not expected to just develop for yourself, right?

So my only option to develop an Android app for free is to abandon Pascal as a language?

How practical would it be to try converting my app to a Lazarus project?

I require some advice from the sages of this forum, In 2019 I wanted to learn cross-platform development so I purchased the latest version of Delphi at the time and I wrote an companion Android app for my main Windows based software. The Android app did not justify paying continued version renewals (making less than $400/year) so I stopped updating to new versions of Delphi, stopping at v10.3. Even though my Android application is very basic, I don't think I can submit an app created in Delphi 10.3 to the google play store due to the old SDK version Google no longer accepts. My question is, what is be the best path forward to allow me to submit new versions of the app to the google play store? Use the community version? Rewrite the app in a free alternative to Delphi (any recommendations)? Something else I haven't considered?

From what you're writing, it seems that I'm in more of a mess than I initially considered. Most of the strings I use are WideString in order to support Unicode text in Delphi 7, not only that, all of my base visual components are based on the TNT Unicode library (e.g. TTNTForm, TTNTListBox, TTNTStringList, etc), so I can't even load the project without getting lots of error messages and I'm not even sure if the TNT Unicode library is compatible with Delphi 10.3, which means I have to revert 1000's of work-arounds for unicode text that I've implemented over the years. My code also uses quite a bit of ASM optimized code for Audio DSP, graphic processing, etc.

Is there a way for me to continue developing/fixing the current Delphi 7 version while slowly fixing the code (maintaining Delphi 7 compatibility) based on compiler errors in the Delphi 10.3 environment without breaking everything? Or is my only option to maintain two separate code-bases until I successfully complete the transition?

Everyone replying about strings, my code deals with a lot of UTF8 encoded strings, wouldn't leaving "string" as is has the potential of breaking UTF8 encoding in places?

Thank you everyone for your kind advance. Zoom Player is already fully unicode, I bypassed this Delphi 7 limitations by using the TNT Unicode Controls, so at least part of the process wouldn't be as painful. Since whatever string that needed to support unicode is already defined as "WideString", I thought of doing a blind search and replace from "String" to "AnsiString".

I hope this is the right spot & apologize if it isn't. I am the developer of Zoom Player, a windows media playback software developed in Delphi and initially released early 2000. Since then, Zoom Player has grown to over 500,000 lines of code and code-base wise, Zoom Player is stuck at Delphi 7. Over the years I got around most of Delphi 7's shortcoming using custom code, but now I've reached a point where converting Zoom Player to 64bit is becoming a greater necessity. I own a license to Delphi 10.3 so that is the 64bit target code-base I'm aiming for. Do you have any advice for me on ways to automate the jump from Delphi 7 32bit to Delphi 10.3 64bit without breaking the code in 1000's of places? Is there an AI agent or some other tool that could help me in this context? Right now this feels like a pain-staking months long project, am I wrong?

ImageEn is overkill and I can't pay for it. I couldn't find the actual compiled DLL for the GitHub project, otherwise I'd do the headers myself. I simply can't compile the DLLs as I don't have the infrastructure for this. I am aware that there is a section in the readme file that points to a windows library, but it doesn't link to a DLL (the only file there is "avif_x64_Release.lib"), so I'm not sure how I can use that in Delphi. Nope, nothing came up (and I did search both Google and Github before posting here). Thank you, but that's a video component, which interestingly enough is not an issue as there are AV1 video decoders out there that can be used in Delphi through DirectShow.

It's a relatively new image format, part of the AV1 specification. I haven't found any Delphi compatible sample code or a dll with Delphi headers for this format, any hints?

I think this issue has to do with the integrated debugger an some form of optimization microsoft changed in Windows 10. More info from Marco. If I disable the integrated debugger then running from inside Delphi works at the same speed as if I run it externally, so I don't think that having D7 installed under the program files folder is the cause of this issue. I tried setting "delphi32.exe" in Win7 compatibility mode, but it didn't help. I even tried running externally and then connecting the debugger, but as soon as new DLLs are loaded (playing a media file using directshow), everything is the same slowness. My problem running in a VM is that I'm developing a media player and as such, it uses a lot of hardware acceleration features and running under a VM will be a headache. And a media player needs internet access for streaming and opening a Win7 machine to the internet is a bit dangerous nowadays when security patches are no longer released. Any other ideas?