Lange hat es gedauert, aber wie ein altes Sprichwort so schön sagt: "Gut Ding will Weile haben.". Nach langen Verhandlungen ist es uns endlich gelungen eine eigene Bleibe für unsere Karategruppe zu finden. Als Karate Dôjô Suganuma gehen wir als Abteilung des TSV Maccabi München e.V., dem jüdischen Verein Münchens. Ziel von Maccabi ist es Kinder, Jugendliche und Erwachsene verschiedener Herkünfte einander näher zu bringen und Brücken zwischen den jüdischen Mitgliedern der Gemeinde und nicht-jüdischen Mitgliedern zu schaffen.

Die Karateabteilung fängt mit wenigen Mitgliedern an und wird hoffentlich schnell wachsen, so dass wir uns selbst finanziell gut tragen können.

Hello folks,

finally we will bring a new product on the market, completely developed in Delphi 2007 for Windows. The software will allow you to render HDR images from one or multiple single images.

If you do not know much about HDR imaging, I recommen the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

Whom are we looking for? People with real interest in HDR imaging, who have some time to take images with their digital camera (DSLR recommended) and try to compose final HDR images using our software. If you have experience with other HDR software (like Photomatix, Artizen, FDRTools, ...) you probably can help us too ;-)

So, if you are interested in joining the beta, a few spots are still available. Write a short email to beta (at) fasthdr.com, put your name into the email and a short reason why you are interested. If you have samples of previously made HDRs online (like Flickr), include a link, but please, do not put them into the email.

Anyway, another thought. We use a few TMS components in this project. Many people ranted about my TMS posts and how I was making all of it bad - they should have read more properly. I only talked about one specific component, and I know there are many more, and quiet a few of them, I do like too ;-)

FastHDR uses following great TMS Components (among others): TAdvOfficePager, TAdvOfficeCheckBox, TSpinEdit, TAdvRangeSlider, TAdvTrackBar
Also, we use: ImageEn from HiComponents, TNT Components, DC RAW and ImageMagick

If you are interested in (digital) photographie, you might want to check out those sites:

• http://www.photozone.de/ (English, lens reviews, general information about technology)
• http://strobist.blogspot.com/ (English, all about flashes)

There are more, but those two just stand out. I'll add more over time, I'm sure ;)

Barcelona - 004, ursprünglich hochgeladen von dwischnewski

This week one of our customers needed me in Barcelone for a meeting. Having some spare time, I took my trusted camera around Barcelona and made quiet a few photos (about 5 GB in data). This is one of my favourite images of the day, the colours just turned out great. I used my Blue-Gold-Polarizer to accomplish it. I think I have to get the Singh-Ray version of the polarizer, it will look even better as far as I know ;-)

I hope you like it as well.

Jetzt ist das zweite Delphi CodeCamp sehr erfolgreich abgeschlossen und wieder habe ich über die Entwicklung mit Delphi für Windows Vista referiert. Dieses Mal hat das Delphi CodeCamp in Wiesbaden gastiert. Den Tag zuvor habe ich genutzt, um ein paar Fotos zu machen. Dreie dieser sind in meinem Flickralbum Wiesbaden zu sehen.

Unabghängig davon möchte ich das nächste Mal wahrscheinlich ein neues Thema anbieten und würde mich über Anregungen sehr freuen. Also, wenn Sie einen Wunsch haben, dann her damit.   

Yesterday I sent an e-mail to Bruno of TMS Software naming a few of the problems I've found with their AdvToolBar component. Today he wrote back to me stating, that most are fixed already. I'll wait for the next update on their website and let you know of the changes then. Further, I'll add a special page about the TMS components to my blog (coming with the next update of their components), where I keep track of the progress of their components.

I know, I have used harsh words, however, TMS Software - while being shocked - takes them seriously and works to improve their solution. I am excited to see what will come in the feature for use. I am sure, they will improve the form rendering on Vista too, this needs more work.

I am looking forward to see what comes :-)

Well, if you remember the old web site of TMS Software, you will be glad to learn, that they have relaunched their web site. It looks so much better, you must go and visit their site, it is well worth your time.

Go visit them now: http://www.tmssoftware.com/

@Bruno: sorry I did not answer your e-mail yet, but I will this weekend. I know I promised an faster response, but time did not permit at the moment.

My last post about the VCL Ribbon Controls got me some heated feedback, mostly per e-mail, some as comments (not yet published, but I will, rest assured) and pointed out some more facts. About all those I will write here in the comming days some more.

Some wrote about the "waste of money" and asked me whether I had to write it in such strong words. Did I have to? Probably not. Will I change it? No, the word is out now. Am I sorry, just a little. I should have worded it differently, however, it is out now, and I will stand by it.

Will I do some more reviews about both controls. Yes, probably. It was pointed out to me, that the DevExpress controls violate the license as well. However not where, so I guess I have to do some more comparisons to the style guide. Bruno of TMS Software asked me about theirs, and I will answer him today. He, btw was the first to response to me (besides some Skype chats) and he was really friendly about it, though he would have preferred some up-front "warning" or talking about. I admit he has a point there and I'll think about such things in the feature.

The TMS solution has more optional features, that the DevExpress solution has not. I will talk about those as well. I'll also talk about some of the things written before, where TMS has solutions, but forces you as programmer to always watch out for those. It has advantages as well as disadvantages, but for my productivity I rate those disadvantages higher. If this post has some overall effect on the Ribbon Control of TMS, I will be happy to test it for them and I will be happy to blog about that as well.

Further, rest assured that I did not have an easy time writing that last post, but on the other hand I do not understand why so many get so worked up when someone does say what they think, even if it is not a positive mood. I am rather honest than shy. Sorry for hurt hearts.

Currently I am playing around with different ribbon controls. Sadly, there is not one single solution for VCL Delphi developers, that brings (almost) all the features into our IDE - not one! THe two big solutions out there are

• ExpressBars^TM Suite from DevExpress (fairly good)
• AdvToolBar from TMS Software (mediocre)

First, let's take a look at how MS Word 2007 displays the ribbon controls.

Since Microsoft has patented the Fluent Office UI (as they call it), so if you plan to use it in your applications you have to agree to their license. Sadly, we are not allowed to discuss the license publicly, if you do not have agreed to it yourself. So all I write about it here, you have to read up on yourself. More information you'll find at: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa973809.aspx.

Anyway, whether you like the UI style or not, it is an eye catcher and imo once you get used to it, it is a really effecient way to access the applications functions.

Now, first a look at the solution from DevExpress.

DevExpress has done a great job in bringing the Ribbon Controls into our VCL applications. Once you have taken the time to understand their logic in how to setup your UI, it is very easy to use. Their nice approach in how to use the Action components makes it very easy to divide your application code into UI handling and business logic.

However, if you take a look at the Word screen shot, you'll notice the red area in the title bar "Bildtools", those are part of the contextual tabs of the Ribbon UI design. They are highlighted to tell the user that their functions are directly related to the currently selected object. Sadly, DevExpress has not implemented this feature, one of the most usefull and sensible, into their VCL solution. The request to add this feature was entered on 11/20/2006 and its state (currently: Accepted - Release TBD) has not changed since 11/30/2006.

Now, let's look at the TMS solution:

Imho, this is a really bad implementation of the Fluent Office Ribbon UI. First, you see the frame of the application - that is as "good" as you can get it with their solution - and this really looks terrible. Next, they are violating the Ribbon UI license in multiple areas, which, sadly, I am not allowed to discuss here. Send me an email if you have specific questions about that, we'll work out a way to talk about it. However, since you have to agree to the license in order to use it in your application, you automatically violate it as soon as you use the TMS solution (example: look at the bottom of the ribbon control, look at the [I] access key hint, ...) - so you must not use it.

Whether, or not, this is part of the license, I can talk about one part of the TMS solution, which is bad. Once the window becomes to small to fit all groups (such as Clipboard, Font - Paragraph, Styles, ... in the screen shot above) of the ribbon page, they collapse in a way that the user does not see, which group is which - no labels, no icons, ... Your users will hate you!

Besides this point, imo, the design time usage of the AdvToolBar is horrible. You have to exactly place every component - they should be placed automatically. I do not want to align them by hand, the should flow! I do not have to align them in normal action menu bars either, just arrange their order.

So, if you are looking for a VCL Ribbon Control, currently I would suggest to use the Devexpress solution. However, be aware that they do not support contextual tabs currently, and probably never will (please, let me be mistaken in this point!). If you need those, imo you are out of luck, because you imo you should leave your fingers from the TMS solution, that is wasted money.

Well, that said. If you know of another VCL Ribbon Control, which can be used commercially, let me know. I'll check it out!

Ottobrunn and Neubiberg, ursprünglich hochgeladen von dwischnewski

Well, just to talk about it. On Saturday I played for the first time with the HDR feature of Corel Paint Shop Pro X2. It is fairly easy to use and produces good results, even with hand held shots, that need to be aligned. Sadly it produces some ghosting, as you can see with the car, that is (not) there. We'll see what else will come...

Well, it is available since about 3 weeks now and I had some feedback already. Now, I would like you guys to take a look at it and let me know what you think. There is a small update in the pipeline, but that is not available yet. A short product description and a video are on the project site: http://www.wischnewski.tv/en/products/dw32pl.html

Start localizing your applications. Demos come with the installer - the product is free for personal and commercial (not governmental) use.

Munich City Express stop Neubiberg, ursprünglich hochgeladen von dwischnewski

Actually, I have taken this picture in February as well, but this is not so important. Anyway, this picture was taken without a tripod, 1/30 sec, Av 4,0, and 35mm. It was a cool evening, when I went home from work. Since I held the camera in my hand, it is a little blury due to shaking of my hand.   

Since Sebastian Gingter (a moderator of the Delphi-PRAXiS) is not on the Delphi-Feeds list, and he just uploads(!) his papers right now, I am giving you a pointer over to his blog. His papers are on WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) and Patterns (MVVM), in German, too.

Entries:

• WMI
• MVVM

My conference sessions are all done, so the papers are ready for download. Go to my Conference Papers page and download them as you like. They are German only this time.

Just a few minutes ago, Daniel Magin has published his BlackFish WebConsole. Go, download it, check it out and use BlackFish SQL now. The WebConsole is available for free!

Today an interesting question came up in the Delphi-PRAXiS. One of our users asked how to parse parameters sent to a NT service application. The good old trusted version of normal VCL applications does not work:

          for I := 1 to ParamCount do Foo(ParamStr(I)); 

So a quick dive into the Delphi 2007 source code revealed an interesting property of the TService class, called Param.

          for I := 1 to ParamCount do Foo(Param[I]); 

So if you ever want to run parameterized services, that is the way to get them ;-)

Well, I just hope that the EKON has a good start today and all of you, there already HAV FUN! The first two days are centered on Workshops mostly on basic OOPP/Delphi concepts. EKON Spring itself is centered around Delphi concepts, rather than all things surrounding development with Delphi.

My Session are on Wednesday Logging with SmartInspect and on Thursday Application Localizing using my new tool.

Tomorrow I will take off here and come to Frankfurt - I am looking forward to see you all there!

At the EKON Spring, I'll present a new solution for multi-language VCL applications. It allows you to translate all forms and resource strings in an external application, comes with a command line tool for updating strings. Every language resource can be deployed seperatly, the application can be deployed without any additional resources at all - in the original developer language.

In a second step, I'll probably will not show that at the EKON Spring yet, you can save translations of forms and resource units for later projects to use.

Stay tuned for more, I'll present that here after the EKON for download ;-)

Best of all, there will be a fully usable version for free.

Munich, Germany - Street at Night, ursprünglich hochgeladen von dwischnewski

Well, so I start picking up the habit of posting a photo I made every once in a while. Sorry ;-)

This one was taken last Sunday and has an exposure time of about 80 seconds using my trusted EOS 400 and a new lens I bought second hand. I was just playing around with it and just love this picture. It made my desktop about 5 mintues later.

Taken from my balocony pointing at the street in a mild night, just about 0°C - mild for the season, anyway.

Finally, we have announced the official date of the upcoming Delphi Days 2008, the 4th time the German speaking community will meet for sessions, talks, and get-togethers. This year we will meet in Günzburg, southern Germany to better accomodate Delphi developers coming from Austria and Switzerland as well.

While planing is still in progress, please, tell us what you would like to see, hear, and do at the next Delphi Days. Your suggestions are welcomed and needed to make it a memorizable event, once again. This year, we want to go back to the roots and more emphasize on the community idea of the whole event.

Let's meet in Günzburg on June 14th!

The Update first for the application is done. Your ideas as well as mine all made it into the application.

New features:

• Preview any True Type Font File not installed on your system
• Install the previewed files on the fly (if you have administrative rights)
• Filter view fonts by their styles (decorative, modern, serif, sans-serif, script, monospace, proportional)
• Get detailed information about the fonts
• Enumerate dependend fonts (eg: character set sub-font, real bold/italic/etc. versions)
• Get a quick preview of each font in list

Font Review Application

You can download the application from here (1,6 MB, ZIP, InstallAware Installer, Digitally Signed). If you have the previous version installed, simply run this setup. It will automatically uninstall the old version prior to installing the ppdate.

While the last version did not need an installer, this version does in fact need it. To accomodate the Windows Vista UAC, the installer is packaged in an out-of-process COM server, the only way to request elevation without requiring administrative rights to simply view/preview fonts.

Any thoughts, any suggestions? Please, let me know ;-)

I got some feedback from you guys via email on the Windows Font Preview Application, I wrote about yesterday. I like that *g*

So, I decided to spend some more time on it and I ask you for input. What features would you like to see? Following a list of features I am thinking about implementing:

• Preview font files without installing them on the system, permanently
• Allow for filtering fonts when looking for a special one for your next essay
• Show some detailed information about the installed font
• Enumerate dependend fonts (eg: character set sub-font, real bold/italic/etc. versions)
• Quick preview of all fonts in list

What (else) would you like? Drop me an email or leave a comment here.

You probably know this text from the built in Windows font preview application.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Well, it is nice to see a font, when you scroll through them. Many applications out there allow to easily few multiple fonts at once. But all free tools I know of lack the possibility to enter your own (unicode) text to review a font. Well, today I needed just that and I let you all use it for free ;-)

It features:

• Font Size (6 to 128 pt)
• Bold, Italic, and Underline
• Quality: default, draft, proof, aliased, non-aliased, and ClearType

Font Review Application

To get the application, go to the update page.

This week the administrators of www.dsdt.info (Delphi-Source, der Delphi-Treff) relaunched the web site with a new design. The new side reminds me of a Web 2.0 portal just from the looks of it. With the relaunch of their site, they chose a new name, simply www.Delphi-Treff.de. It is one of the leading German language Tutorial sites on the web for Delphi developers.

If you know German, check it out.

I always forget to post it to my blog, so finally here it is. Since two years I am using this page and it helps with those crazy connection strings. When you need to find the right one for your database, check it out at www.connectionstrings.com.

Well, as I've written before, I have reinstalled my work machine. Still the same setup as in the last post, basically it is just Windows Vista Ultimate (running in a domain), 2007 Office System, and Visual Studio. First, I have installed Visual Studio, then Office and last the RAD Studio. A few minor tools along the way.

When working in Visual Studio on ASP.NET Applications, I could not use the designer at all. Using the Source view of ASPX files worked fine. When switching to Split- or Design view, the editor would freeze and nothing else would happen. I could close the tab and keep on working in Source view. Not more on ASPX-files. While this is fine most the time, I sometimes would just like the designer.

I reinstalled (repair function) the whole Visual Studio 2008. And it got better, well almost. When switching into Split- or Design view I could see the page, but every control would be causing the following error.

Error Creating Control - Panel1
The type initializer for 'Microsoft.Web.Design.ExtenderInformationServiceProvider' threw an exception.

Or it would tell me, that a control with the name of Panel1 exists already. Whichever error it liked to show. Well, after searching the internet for about an hour I found a solution that seemed to make no sense, so it should work. So I did just that:

• Uninstall the .NET Framework 3.5
• Reboot
• Reinstall the .NET Framework from the Visual Studio DVD
• Reboot
• Run Visual Studio and be happy

It works! So if you have a similar problem, try your luck with un- and reinstalling the .NET Framework 3.5.   

I've used the christmas-new-year-time to reinstall my work station. One year of abuse, no images, etc. has taken its toll and it was time to do something about just that. After I had reinstalled my most needed applications on-top of Windows Vista Ultimate (Visual Studio 2008, RAD Studio 2007, InterBase 2007, 2007 Office System, Acrobat Reader and 7-zip) I pulled my source codes of our largest project. We needed an addition to one of the libraries, so I loaded it into the Delphi IDE and wanted to go to the type library editor (it is a ActiveX/COM server library).

Well, the menu point was grayed out. Delphi did not let me know why it did not want to load the type library, nor did it show any error message. After experimenting a little, I found out, that I could load about half the COM server projects just fine, while others did not let me load the type library editor either. No error messages, no warnings, and all would compile just fine.

Later I tried to load the TLB file directly into Delphi and I got the message, that it cannot be loaded, because a dependent ActiveX library is not installed. So I started registering the other type libraries of the project, one by one, wondering why - I never had to do that before - and it did not help in any way. Later I had an idea and checked upon my MS XML installations and found the MS XML 3, MS XML 5, and MS XML 6 were installed, MS XML 4 was missing, however. After installing MS XML 4 I could load all projects again and edit the type libraries as well.

So please, CodeGear, start giving us meaningful error messages in this case too. I will have to come up with a example showing the problem, but how can I let them know how really important such issues can be...?

Anyway, happy new year to all of you out there!

John Kaster informed us today of the passing of Robert Marquardt. Robert was a well respected member of the Delphi-PRAXiS and we will remember him in the fondest ways. He has done much for the Delphi Jedi Project and I hope the project will find a new person, who will step into his steps and help it prosper the way it should.

I have met Robert at various Delphi happenings and it has been a pleasure talking to him, always. I hope you have a great time ahead of you. My sincere sympathies for his family and closests friends, I have just written short messages with him and had small talks only, but they were a pleasure, always.

Thank you again Robert, for all you have done for me, the Delphi-Community of Germany and the Delphi developers world wide. It hasn't been easy always, especially in the last years, but you have been there for us, THANKS!   

Last week I asked for a list of Delphi parsers/lexers, to analyze Pascal/Delphi files. One of the solutions named, and by far the best one, was the Castalia Delphi Parser. After playing with it a while I started to see what it really can do. While it is not the easiest to use, it goes a long way. However, I ran into some wall. Files like Windows.pas and System.pas from the original Delphi distribution (checked against Delphi 2007) cannot be parsed with it.

For Windows.Pas, it stops on the declaration of the type DWORD.

          type
          {
Translated from WINDEF.H } WCHAR = WideChar; {$EXTERNALSYM
WCHAR} PWChar = PWideChar; LPSTR = PAnsiChar; {$EXTERNALSYM
LPSTR} PLPSTR = ^LPSTR; {$EXTERNALSYM PLPSTR} LPCSTR
= PAnsiChar; {$EXTERNALSYM LPCSTR} LPCTSTR = PAnsiChar; {$EXTERNALSYM
LPCTSTR} LPTSTR = PAnsiChar; {$EXTERNALSYM LPTSTR} LPWSTR
= PWideChar; {$EXTERNALSYM LPWSTR} PLPWSTR = ^LPWSTR; {$EXTERNALSYM
PLPWSTR} LPCWSTR = PWideChar; {$EXTERNALSYM LPCWSTR} DWORD
= Types.DWORD; {$EXTERNALSYM DWORD}

In System.pas it stops, because it cannot handle {$IFDEF} blocks very well. When coming to the second time when unwind is declared (this time for Linux) it stops, because it needs a new const before it.

          const
          {$IFDEF
MSWINDOWS} unwind = 'unwind.dll'; type UNWINDelphi-PRAXiSROC
= Pointer; function UnwindRegisterIPLookup(fn: UNWINDelphi-PRAXiSROC;
StartAddr, EndAddr: LongInt; Context: Pointer; GOT: LongInt): LongBool; cdecl; external unwind
name '__BorUnwind_RegisterIPLookup'; function UnwindDelphiLookup(Addr:
LongInt; Context: Pointer): UNWINDelphi-PRAXiSROC; cdecl; external unwind
name '__BorUnwind_DelphiLookup'; function UnwindRaiseException(Exc:
Pointer): LongBool; cdecl; external unwind
name '__BorUnwind_RaiseException'; function UnwindClosestHandler(Context:
Pointer): LongWord; cdecl; external unwind
name '__BorUnwind_ClosestDelphiHandler'; {$ENDIF}{$IFDEF
LINUX} unwind = 'libborunwind.so.6'; 

Do you have a solution for those problems, or do you now another parser/lexer which will help me along.

Thanks and a Happy New Year,
Daniel