Ian Branch

Yes. That is all I ever use. P.S. What was your original Font style? I have changed it so many times I have forgotten. P.P.S. I just tried the non dpi unaware version of Delphi and the Font settings all work OK.

Here's another one for you: When building a proj or group it shows one column. That's fine: When I close all projects it goes back to two columns width but shows only one column. If I minimize and then maximize Delphi the two columns show again. Ian

Better: This is for these settings: Trouble is that for both settings I select a font size of 8: Again, cosmetic, but workable. Ian

Thank you for the Fonts mod. You are right about the Treeview. 🙂 I am using a 4k monitor which runs as 125%. I selected 10 for the font size for th Treeview and got this: Which displayed as this: There also seems to be a bug, perhaps resolution based, in the displaying of the .dproj names in the Controllist: Note the indenting of the names. No biggie, just cosmetic, all still workable. Regards, Ian

Hi Team, Background: My Pacific Island Customer is still in the 'Dark Ages' when it comes to his Network/Workstation environment. Old HP Server with Win Server 2012 r2 64bit. Two HDD in Raid 1 but one is 3Gb/s the other is 6Gb/s. 😞 His LAN workstations are old as well, running Win 7. Users can also access my Delphi database apps on his Server via RDP and/or via the Web using Cybele's ThinFinity. The Database engine is ElevateSoft's ElevateDB 64bit. His philosophy is, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'. To which I respond, 'If it ain't as good as it can be, then it's broke'. He just doesn't want to spend any money on it unless he absolutely has to. Anyway, with 26+ Users and multiple multi-User Apps, things tend to bog down. Surprise!! Idea: As he won't spend money at his end, what can I do application wise to improve the apparent database performance and therefore the User experience? Right now you have many ideas going through your mind... 😉 What I decided, as much for the perceived need as for an exercise, was the concept of a Cacheing TDatasource. TCachedDatasource. Development: With the assistance of two Associates, Claude & ChatGPT 4o, I developed and put the design concept/spec to them. They each came back with a proposal which I vetted and selected one as the most promising. Also the one I could understand. 😉 So, between the three of us, playing one against the other and back, we developed a basic component that worked. We then refined it further, eliminating some errors, optimising some areas, until I was generally satisfied and it appeared to work. Replaced the existing TDatasource components in one of my apps with the new TCachedDatasource and tested general functionality. All good at this stage. So, keeping this 'original' code aside, I put it to them and raised questions about various scenarios. i.e. Autoinc fields, searching, filtering, etc. The component was slowly refined. Playing each of the AIs against each other for issues/refinements. The overall priority was Data integrity. No loss or corruption of data. This to the detriment of any other functionality. Result: After a day of interaction we have what is attached here. Note some additional properties: 1. Active:- True (default) - the caching is turned on. False - The component acts like a normal TDatasource. 2. CacheSize:- This is the number of records to cache. This is associated with VisibleRecords. 3. EnableLogging:- False (default) - No logging. True - Logging enabled. A text Log will be sent to what is defined in the LogFileName property. 4. LogFileName:- Full path/name of the Log file for logging. If only a Name is entered it will be written to the Apps directory. If there is no entry here then EnableLogging is ignored. 5. RefreshInterval:- The interval, in seconds, that the cache will be refreshed. Default is 60 seconds. 6. VisibleRecords:- The number of visible records that a DBGrid may be showing. This feeds back to the CacheSize and allows dynamic adjustment if the DBGrid height is adjusted and therefore shows more, or less, records. Conclusion: As I said, this was as much a desire to improve things for the User, as it was an exercise for myself using AI. I'm sure it isn't perfect, and could do with some tweaks here and there. Feel free. If you find anything notable and fix it, please publish it here, I'm sure others will appreciate your submissions. I haven't done any performance testing. This was developed in Delphi 12.2. I think it should be good back to XE2. Learnings: There is a lot that goes into something like this when multiple factors need to be considered. Claude tends to forget existing code when proposing/integrating new code suggestions. Claude was/is limited in the 'length' of Chats. ChatGPT was reasonable but not as code particular as Claude. Don't do this again. 🙂 I hope somebody finds this of some use, even if it is as an exercise in how not to do it. Feel free to can the whole idea. 🙂 P.S. As this was a Human/AI collaborative effort, who owns the IP?? 😉 Regards, Ian uCachedDataSource.pas

gkobler, It would be nice to be able to change the font size. Pretty small on a 4k monitor. 😉

Hi Anders, See, I knew alternatives would be suggested. 🙂 Until refresh. I don't believe so. I did say it wasn't perfect... 😉

Interesting. I was not aware of that. Food for thought. On what basis does UPX allocate the space/block of memory? I guess this wouldn't really be an issue with modern Windows/PCs, but my Customer's Users are using older Win 7 SP1 PCs with 4GB of memory.

Hi Guys, I acknowledge the previous two commentors and their valid inputs, however it is horses for courses. I was simply offering a suggestion. I have used UPX for many years without any issues. Note: I use Eurekalog not MadExcept. It provides not only compression, but also therefore a small level of obfuscation to casual file browsers. That is all I need. Like? Yes I could, but, the other end is so computer illiterate that they would screw up the unzip and save process. Pacific island users. It has to be simple for them to just copy into their directory. Even then they screw it up sometimes...:-(

If it simply the size of the .exe you are looking to reduce, I use UPX, https://github.com/upx/upx/releases, it handles 32 & 64 bit Apps. I use a compression value of 7 and get a roughly 30% reduction in .exe size. It will also handle wild card file names, i.e. upx -7 *.exe.

Hi Team, My Customer lives in the dark ages and won't update is PCs from 32/64 bit Windows 7. Has anybody had any issues with any of the newer Delphi language enhancements not working as desired in 32.64 bit Apps under Windows 7? Regards & TIA, Ian

I develop on Win 11 64bit. The question was/is about Apps created & Windows 7.. It would seem that it is all OK.

Hi Team, D12.2 P2. I have seen several comments about the IDE hanging. Are they really sure it has? My experience is that it appears to be hung and non-responsive but if I look in the Task Manager I can still see it doing something. No idea what. Sometimes it takes literally minutes, very frustrating minutes, and time wasting, but it eventually returns. I experience it most often when switching from Code to Design and vise-versa on my larger projects but from time-to-time on smaller projects as well. Just my experience Regards, Ian

Hi Anders, Interesting. I will have a look next time. Won't be long. 😞 I have never actually had it not recover, although it has tken close to 10 minutes sometimes.

MyCustomCalendar.pas Hi Team, Delphi 12.2 p2. 32 bit App. It builds and installs OK but when I go to add it to a form Delphi thinks about it for a while, way too long, and then falls over. 😞 It is a derivation of TMonthCalendar. Appreciate any insights. Regards & TIA,

Tks Lajos, You, that fixed it Tks. I didn't think about the race condition it would set up. Ian

Hi Team, I was/am under the understanding that if I build a function library such that the DCUs are in a bin directory, add it to Delphi, and add the bin and source directories, in that order, the source should not be rebuilt with the App if an element of the library is used. Is this the case? The reason for the question is that this is not what is happening here. Regards & TIA, Ian

Ahhh. Thank you Uwe for the clarification and options. Much appreciated.

Hi Team, I have had a small dabble with various AI machines, Meta, ChatGPT & Gemini. None of them seem ready for prime time, yet. Getting close. I am seeking opinions of the use of one.any of the AI's in the IDE v keeping it separate via a browser? If in the IDE is favoured, which interface/AI? Regards, Ian

Hear, Hear.

I build 32 bit Apps exclusively because my Customers refuse to update their 32 bit Windows 7 PCs. Yes, I develop on a 64bit PC.

Hi Team, Delphi 12.2. I have the following line: ShowMessage('State: ' + System.TypeInfo.GetEnumName(TypeInfo(TDataSetState), Ord(APD.State)) + '. Job # = ' + IntToStr(APD.JobNo)); I tried adding System.TypeInfo to the uses clause but Delphi complains it can't compile it. The issue I have here with this line of code is that Delphi tells me it expects a '(' but found a ',' after the TypeInfo. I checked the code at https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/CodeExamples/Athens/en/TypInfoGetEnumName_(Delphi) and I am consistant with it. Have I missed something or is this a bug? Regards & TIA, Ian

Doh! Well, isn't that counter intuitive... Speaks volumes about how we 'journalise' when we read.. Thank you. All sorted now. Regards, Ian

Hi Team, I recently started to play in 64 bit. Normally I was 32 bit exclusive. I ran up against an issue with paszip.pas, used in a couple of places in various 3rd Party libraries. I kept geting an error at line 4341 or thereabouts: file_ := INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE; Tracing, I found variable file_ was defined at line around 3963 as a DWORD: file_: dword; This is fine in 32bit but problematic in 64bit. The solution was to change the declaration to: file_: THandle; Now paszip.pas builds without issue in both 32 & 64 bit. HTH in some way.. Regards, Ian

Hi Team, Further issues/changes have been identified/adressed in PasZip as a follow on to my initial issue. The current PasZip can be downloaded from https://github.com/synopse/mORMot Regards, Ian