I have a mid sized code library (several thousand lines) that uses Excel Interop (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel).
The program that keeps a workbook open for hours at a time, and does manipulations like adding/editing text, shapes, and calling macros.
I have not once seen a Marshal.ReleaseComObject. Yet, the users don't report any problems.
In all cases, the objects go out of scope within several seconds.
So, is this a problem? How? If yes, how do I justify to management that it needs cleanup? If not, why recommend it in the first place?
It's been a while, but I did a lot of Excel automation from .NET. I never used Marshal.ReleaseComObject either. Never saw a problem.
Related
I seem to have issues sometimes opening a drawing database. In the past, I used: MyDb.ReadDwgFile(DrawingName, IO.FileShare.ReadWrite, True, Nothing), with the IO.Fileshare.ReadWrite being the point of interest. But, I started having issues with it when I moved to Design Automation. I Later, I found a different file open mode enum of FileOpenMode.OpenForReadAndAllShare and started using it.
I understand both enums are from different libraries (system.io vs autodesk.autocad.databaseservices), but why do I have off and on success using one versus the other? Could it be because of the .dwg version, or because AEC libraries are being loaded? I switched to the autodesk enum and was having success for a while, but now I have some files that pass though and others that don't. For right now, my plan is to try one, check for a failure, then try the other. Is anybody else running into this?
I don't think this is specific to Design Automation. I think the same DWG file will behave the same on your machine too. I suspect what's going on is that you have some unreadable objects in the drawing. ReadWrite will engage the "lazy loading" code path: only the objects that you open are loaded from disk. "...AllShare" will load every object from disk since you want others to be able to access the drawing simultaneously.
I've created a core mechanic of my game and want to create a level editor for it. my game is not a tile-based one, so my needs are quite specific. Game is written using Swift and Cocos2d-swift, but i dont think i can figure something out with Sprite Builder.
What you can advice me? Can I for example create a level editor with c# and then use it from swift code?
And what data structure is the best?
I mean is it possible to serialize classes on desktop Swift application and then just load them on ios from file or I'll need to use json/xml?
It might be an old question but I ended up with using a .Net powered solution. I choosed as It has all controls that you need for creating a rich user interface and also, it has a lot of built-in and third party solutions for serializing levels in any way you want. And the c# syntax is very similar to the Swift one.
The only problem is that you might run windows to work with it.
My game in development also needed a non-tile level editor. A few months ago I took some time to make my choice.
Since my project still uses cocos2d 2.x, I don't use the whole new 3.x and SB system. After some investigation I found out that it would be too time consuming to adjust my whole project to the new system and adjusting SB to my needs, mainly because my game engine has been in development for quite some time and is close to finished. Further more, I couldn't find the right information to actually make it work for my game (it needed some odd level architecture I guess).
Finally, I didn't find any other good alternative so I decided to create my own level editor. In this way I had full control and I knew exactly how everything worked which was a huge advantage for me.
Right now my level editor has been finished for some time and works like a charm. I still think in my situation I made the right choice. Also because I learned a lot this way, building everything from the ground up. Having said that, for my next game I will probably go with the main stream and use SB from the start. Also for you I advice you to still check out SB and take some time for it before making an alternative choice...
I'll explain how I did mine. Disclaimer: it has some oddity's which only worked in my situation, but hopefully it helps a bit with choosing your own way to go, that's the goal I'm aiming at...
I used:
max/msp
Although it's developed to make music and audio based software, I used max/msp because it's very easy and fast for creating visual and interface based software as well.
More importend: I happened to be very experienced in it, which shortened the development time tremendously.
javascript
Inside the max/msp patch is a javascript file running. This file is like a bridge between the interface and the visual representation of the level being edited, and the database in which the level
is saved in. 70% of the editor development went into this file I think.
sqlite
All the data is written in a sqlite database. Again, this has been mainly the choice because it saved a great amount of development time in my case. I could have used xml files for instance, but my game was already using a sqlite database and because of this I felt comfortable using it, I had no experience in xml. Also all the code was already in place for a big part, which speeded up the whole proces a lot.
I'm very happy with the end result. It does everything I need, it's easy too use and since I made everything myself from the ground up I know exactly how every works.
Good luck with you choices.
I've got an Excel file that takes ~10 inputs and outputs ~5 numbers. The problem is, the calculations run involve lots of assumptions, are rather complex, and laid out over 5 excel sheets with lots of lookup tables, etc.
I'd like to wrap the Excel model in an iPad app -- so that it's easy to solicit user input and show the easy outputs without having them to see the dirty work beneath.
It's important for me to encapsulate the Excel model since that's still getting tweaked and adjusted... so to have a wrapper set up as opposed to reproduce the logic in the Excel file would save me probably 2 orders of magnitude of time.
Have looked around and not found a way to do this yet... any thoughts?
Thanks
Two options come to mind.
One is that you can use an excel wrapper on iOS. Details can be found here: How can i create excel sheet and file in iPhone sdk?
The second option is to setup a server and pass the task onto the server. I'm familiar with Ruby, and creating/modifying excel files in Ruby is a breeze. I'd expect PHP, python, etc. to have similar faculties.
Either option is going to depend on your use case, whether you're charging for the app or not, and your familiarity with server side programming.
Does it happen that no one ever needs histogram in Delphi ?
Google gave me a bunch of half-baked code snippets. But it means that each time you need one - you have to invent one more ad hoc bycicle.
Torry mostly told me about some very expensive closed source Math Statistics or Financial packages, that as a subproduct have histograms. But they are very expensive and since you have no source code, each time you install update onto IDE/RTL/VCL you're probably screwed, until the vendor would make (soon ? ever?) updated packages. Given thatvendor is still does exists.
S.O. told me nothing, nil.
For what i found...
Mitov.com provides some histograms in PlotLab. which told to be free for non-commercial. Alas, it is again closed-source, and if the Histogram - quite fancy let's admit -is the onlything i need from it - why pay the whole price ?
One more example http://DSpatial.sf.net
Just few years ago i used it in Delphi 5, but even then i felt the author is loosing interest in the project. I made few enhancement, fixed some bugs, he merged them and that's all. The component was not very useful and lacked upon features, yet better than nothing. Now the project seems to be completely dead. Good old days, etc. But i do not want them back :-)
And Stack Overflow seemingly carries no single question about it. But maybe just no one bothered to create topic, after search found nothing ? I mean, Delphi was created for database access, histograms are one of basic ways to visualize data, and no one crosses them ? Something with nice style, with rich mouse tooltip like in HTML/CSS/JS on http://www.moskva.fm/stations/FM_95.2 ?
Or is this too domain-related and not ever possible to have good abstraction ?
TChart is a control that ships with most versions of Delphi. TChart can be used to make histograms (bar charts) in style. The following give you some ideas about how to use it: http://www.digitalcoding.com/tutorials/delphi/Simple-steps-to-create-Delphi-chart.html and http://delphi.about.com/od/adptips2006/qt/chart_selectbar.htm .
If you need something with code, google the pages at delphiforfun.org/programs/oscilloscope.htm . These are not controls. The oscilloscope article has a histogram with source. Some of the other projects at the site have other histogram graphs with source..not elegant but useful and free. Use them as a template to make your own control.
The link at http://delphiforfun.org/programs/Math_Topics/probability_distributions.htm shows how to make your own statistics displays with "histograms." This example makes use of TChart.
Here is some more stuff to try I found looking at my resource file:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/TAChart, http://members.home.nl/mvanwesten/en_lazarus.html , http://www.martinole.org/TAChart.html ...some of these are GPU components that supposedly work with some versions of Delphi. Perhaps this is your lucky day as there is some source code. The first and third listed probably will work reasonably for histograms. You may have to write your own statistics algorithms.
Found this thread while doing some searching. The ImageEn component suite has a THistogramBox component. It's the NOT prettiest thing in the world, but it's the only one I've found so far.
http://www.imageen.com
I came across a histogram example in a gdiplus package available for download from code central. I don't know if it will do what you need but when I saw it I remembered your SO question.
HTH.
If you were using firemonkey, you could just created a series of TRectangles in series. They can be made unclickable by turning hittest off. Or is that too easy and straightforward?
I need to add printing capabilities to an app and I have been looking around for information about printing. Logical/physical sizes, dpi, font scaling, etc, lots to digest since I never programmed printing into any app before.
Are there any sites that would offer a primer on the topics of page sizes, margins and all the other elements required to understand printing on Windows? I've been looking around for a while but what I find is either cryptic or years old...
I've been playing around with TPrinter, but I would like to build solid printing functionalities and understand what I'm doing better.
Using a report solution is not an option, even though I'm sure it would provide better results much sooner.
Two links to get you started:
Printing with TPrinter
Printing via the TPrinter Canvas
I think that you are looking too lowlevel.
Try looking at the build reporting tools (Rave or whatever is in your product).
Personally i am using a product called Report Builder from Digital Metaphors.
But if you want to do the lowlevel stuff lot og good information can be found at efg's computer lab - printing
Well, I have done things a variety of ways in the past, including the "hard way" with TPrinter. In fact, I recently had to do that again to run a special inventory label printer.
On the other hand, sometimes you are better off taking work others have done and using it for your benefit. I agree that ReportSmith isn't so great, and also it's Delphi (and Windows) specific. Using Excel or Word has those limitations, plus the fact that the user has to actually have them installed.
One thing I have done to make printing easy for some simple applications is just to generate an HTML file and call the user's web browser, then they can print it. HTML tables can be created relatively easily for numerical data, and you can include photos, etc. as well. This works well for some applications, and works on every platform where a web browser is installed. The downside, of course, is that HTML isn't the most precise layout language.
The version of Delphi you´re using is important. A number of Delphis came with print engines like ReportSmith (ugh). Another option thinking laterally is to use MS Word as a print engine. I´ve hooked into instances of Word & Excel before & utilised their functionality. As to raw printing using TPrinter or the print method of TForm you´d have to be pretty desperate. I seem to recall the Pacheo / Texeira Delphi books coming with a pretty good overview so you might want to see if you can find a copy of that somewhere.