PeterPanettone

I have found the very flexible Property Corrector in CnWizards.

I agree. It would be very useful if the MESSAGE DIALOG wizard would remember its size, also between sessions! It should also have a SIZE GRIP in the bottom right corner for easy resizing.

I find Pascal Expert particularly useful: https://www.peganza.com/products_pex.html https://www.peganza.com/find-bugs-early-with-pascal-expert.html It has a very large set of configurable reports about your code health and code quality. I consider it the "medical doctor and therapist of trust" for my code.

In the Delphi 10.4 STRUCTURE PANEL, I select a TCard container control (containing several controls) and try to copy it to the clipboard with CTRL+C. It does not work. Even in the EDIT sub-context menu, the Copy item is disabled: Restarted the IDE. Tried again and again. Can anyone confirm this further annoying IDE bug?

If true, this would confirm my complexity hypothesis. (See above).

Eureka: I have found a solution at Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63336038/from-the-ides-structure-panel-how-to-copy-a-tcard-to-the-clipboard/63338826 Please vote for it!

I fear it is MUCH OLDER. Shall we call it PREHISTORIC?

Please calm down. Everything is OK. You are being loved and we like you.

The FUNDAMENTAL BUG here is that with specific controls like TCard (is that a TControl?) the control is synchronized (and therefore focused) in the Object Inspector BUT not in the Form Designer. I suspect that the causal chain does not go directly from the Structure Panel to the Form Designer but in this way: Structure Panel → Object Inspector → Form Designer and that Object Inspector is the real culprit for the chain interruption for containers like TCard. This is a typical bug that occurs when the complexity of the interacting objects surpasses the developer's capabilities in mastering this complexity.

Alternative solution: 1. First select the TCard in the Structure Panel 2. Then click on the Form Designer's TAB to focus the TCard in the Form Designer 3. Then press CTRL+C to copy the TCard together with all its sub-controls to the clipboard!

You are almost right: After showing the EDIT context menu directly in the Form Designer (right-click on a visual control in the Form Designer) the "Copy" item is enabled. Then showing the EDIT context menu for the same control in the Structure Panel shows the Copy context menu item still enabled but it is not working when clicking on it or when pressing CTRL+C! Therefore, the trick to copy a TCard with all its sub-controls is as following: 1. In the Form Designer, if the TCard is not visible because covered by a full-size control (e.g. a TPanel), click that TPanel and press the ESC key until the TCard is focused. (Look in the Object Inspector). 2. Then press CTRL+C to copy the TCard together with all its sub-controls to the clipboard. General rule: To copy a complex object structure, don't use the faulty Structure Panel but use the Form Designer!

Didn't somebody recently say that computers are DETERMINISTIC? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism As long as you have only a button on the TCard, this is easy. Try that with MANY controls and sub-containers on the TCard...

From your screenshot, you copied a TCardPanel. Not a TCard.

That's the moment when the fear of your own imagination increases the suspense in good horror movies.

Thank you for the confirmation. Could there be a WEIRD DIABOLIC PURPOSE of a sick Embarcadero developer mind behind this malfunction?

Get It offers the new Delphi 10.4 PATCH 2: Unfortunately, the installer (= downloader) does not explicitly mention the information that the installation has to be done MANUALLY. So, if you have not by chance visited the Embarcadero blog: https://community.idera.com/developer-tools/b/blog/posts/patch-2-for-rad-studio-10-4-now-available ...you would believe that PATCH 2 has been installed while it has not. OK, this file has to be executed: \Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\CatalogRepository\10.4Patch2pro-10\R104_Patch2Pro\patch2.bat Since the readme file says: "-The installation will require elevation...", I tried to execute the patch2.bat file with Administrator rights: But it seems that nothing happened after doing this. So I simply double-clicked the patch2.bat file. But no console window was shown to give me visual feedback of the executing patch. The only visual feedback was the HOURGLASS mouse-cursor which remained for over a minute. So I restarted the Delphi 10.4 IDE. In the About dialog, there was no mention of the installed patches 1 and 2. And since the readme file also says the AV bug in the License Manager would be fixed with this Patch 2, I opened the License Manager and ... had the same AV as before the Patch 2: I haven't also found any installation log file. Can anyone confirm this?

Internally, a batch file is being started by a CommandLine. Windows File Explorer (but also other shell-programs) can provide that CommandLine, e.g. by double-clicking on a batch file e.g. in Windows File Explorer. BTW, it would be interesting to inspect the source code of PatchTool.exe...

Obviously you don't know what you are saying. This has nothing to do with UAC (although UAC is involved). I suggest that you re-read what I have written. If you don't understand any particular topic then please ask me.

It seems that PatchTool.exe is HARD-WIRED to Windows File Explorer since it works only in Windows File Explorer. Such HARD-WIRING is not recommended for install tools (nor for any other programs).

It really seems the patch was made in an unprofessional way: Since I am running Windows 10 in a Parallels VM (in COHERENCE mode), the patch was saved in this directory: \\Mac\Home\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\CatalogRepository\10.4Patch2pro-10\R104_Patch2Pro It seems the Patch Tool cannot handle this network path. But the above same network path is also accessible via a normalized path: Y:\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\CatalogRepository\10.4Patch2pro-10\R104_Patch2Pro So I double-clicked the patch2.bat file in this new normalized path inside my default file-manager (Directory Opus). This made the UAC prompt appear and then this console window: ...and when pressing any key, the console window closed. (Obviously, PatchTool.exe had been started without parameters). So I opened my ultimate weapon: Windows File Explorer! In Windows File Explorer, I opened the normalized path and double-clicked the patch2.bat file. This not only showed the UAC prompt, but also gave me that beautiful scrolling lines in the console window, showing me that the patch was executing. However, the created install.log file contains only one line: C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\_patch-backup\2020-07-25 21.02.44 Not very talkative. Then I restarted the Delphi 10.4 IDE and checked the License Manager: The AV bug has gone! So I consider this patch a success, although it could have been built in a more compatible way.

Today in the shower I had an idea - wouldn't Open Type Arrays be a useful thing? What if we could write: procedure DoSomething(const AParam: [string, Integer]); begin if AParam is string then ShowMessage(AParam) else if AParam is Integer then ShowMessage(IntToStr(AParam)); end; One could argue that if we want flexibility we could use overloaded procedures. But if we have procedures with many different parameters then we had to write a lot of overloaded procedures - Open Type Arrays would simplify things a lot. What do you think?

There is a very interesting new VCL Library in town: DelphiUCL (Delphi Universal Component Library): https://github.com/VuioVuio/DelphiUCL Have a look!

As it is well known, the Visual Settings Font Size of the IDE can be edited in the Windows Registry: http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Sydney/en/System_Registry_Keys_for_IDE_Visual_Settings However, this seems not to be the case for the IDE Layouts drop-down menu: For comparison, here is the IDE View menu (where the font size is bigger): Can anyone confirm this?

In Delphi 10.4, I fill a TCheckListBox in a loop adding name= value pairs: for i := 1 to 32 do CheckListBox1.Items.AddPair(GetName(i), GetValue(i)); Of course, the CheckListBox then shows: Well, is there a "trick" to show only the NAMES and HIDE the VALUES in the CheckListBox? I would like to avoid AddObject or messing around with multiple string-lists. Any idea?