Windows 7 integration with Delphi - delphi

I need components to integrate my app to Windows 7. I'm talking about the taskbar's ability to have progressbar, buttons, text and so on.
What is the best you know?

I don't know about components, but I've seen a few blog posts that explain how to implement this yourself. Check out http://www.drbob42.com/examines/examinC5.htm and http://alex.ciobanu.org/?p=215, for example.

Daniel Wischnewski is developing some Windows 7 components for Delphi.
This video on his blog, demonstrates some of the features.

There's a package of Windows 7 components, free with source, at delphi.fsprolabs.com. The best I can say is that the components perform as expected, when you work out how to use them: the implementation is not very elegant and I found it hard to get started with them. Mason Wheeler's link to DrBob's post will get you to about the same point but you will gain useful knowledge along the way.

There is also a project hosted on goolge code from The unknownones with a component set
called TaskbarListComponents.
It looks to be a very nice and a complete implementation.
You can see them in action here.
http://www.vimeo.com/14291783 TTaskbarListThumbButtons and TTaskbarListOverlayIcon
http://www.vimeo.com/14354328 TTaskbarListProgress
http://www.vimeo.com/14356627 TTaskbarlistFormTab and TTaskbarlistControlTab

Related

First steps to reconstruct the architecture in a Delphi 7 project

I am working with an undocumented, 100.000 lines Delphi 7 project and one of my goals is to create a software architecture document from the source code.
Can you give me any ideas on how to approach this?
These tools work with Delphi 7 and are of great help:
the UML tool ModelMaker
the refacotoring tool ModelMaker Code Explorer
the documentation tool Documentation Insight (as of august 2012)
UML diagrams are a great way to get an overview of structure. How well that overview is, depends on how well the structure is.
For taking over projects like these, I start with some basic documentation (often in MarkDown format, as that text based format is version control friendly, and generates nice HTML).
To get that going, it helps if the original developers or/and some base documentation are still there.
Then just start to:
fix bugs / apply feature requests
use ModelMaker to get a feel for overall structure
use ModelMaker Code Explorer as a refactoring tool
use Documentation Insight to document inside the source code (you can generate help files and web pages with the pro version, see feature matrix)
update my Markdown documents with any information that does not fit in the source code documentation well
Note you can put some documentation in using Model Maker Code Explorer, but it can not be exported as help files, since it uses a different documentation format than Documentation Insight.
So I agree with the comment by Jan Doggen (thanks Jan!): just start. Make sure you have the right tools to help that going.
Try running the source code through a newer Delphi version that supports UML modeling, then let it show you how different sections of code related to each other.
Understand will do the job. Free download includes 15 days evaluation which will be more then enough for what you need to document.

How to integrate similar diagam functions in my delphi application?

I would like to use some diagrams/drawings similar to the picture below in my applications especially without having to pay for any third-party components. Any idea where to start ?
You may look at the JVCL JVDiagramShape.
You have a good example, in the \jvcl\examples\JvDiagramShape\2. UseCaseEditor directory created when you install the JVCL. Not as cool as your example but you may choose your own images.
You may found also another example with a WebMapper, in \jvcl\examples\JvDiagramShape\1. WebSiteScanner :

Online programming editor

For a school project i need to write or use a online programming editor. It is a part of a bigger project. I thought of a java application, php/html/javascript or flash.
I have a couple of things i could do:
Find a good working application and edit it so it works with the rest of the project
Find good parts for a editor and make it working my self (syntax highlighter, auto-indent, autocompletion, etc.)
Combination of those two
Does anybody know a good editor or have tips for this project or a editor?
Thanks for reading,
Leon
For the syntax highlighting and basic editing part, check out my recent question Textarea that can do syntax highlighting on the fly?
Solutions presented there:
CodeMirror
Bespin (Mozilla only, but great)
For the rest - autocompletion etc. - ... Check out the Wikipedia article Comparison of JavaScript-based source code editors
Interested to see what other suggestions come up.
Bespin comes to mind. Though it might be too bleeding edge, depending on how the rest of the project is built/meant to be used (but hey, programmers love bleeding edge).
If you decide to use PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript, see GeSHi for syntax highlighting.
I have a side project developed with ACE.
It connects to your server through SFTP and allows you to create new files,read and edit all from your browser with your file tree at sidebar.
Demo at TePe
Code at Github Repo
I found Cobalah Editor it's also built on CodeMirror but with some customization. There are some themes available we can set, increase or decrease font size.

Code completion in Vi editor [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Autocompletion in Vim
(7 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
Is there an autocomplete feature for Vi? ctrlp looks for keywords already used in the document. But suppose I want a.funcname to automatically show members of object a. Is it possible with Vi?
YouCompleteMe. It’s a plugin that offers extremely fast, fully syntax-aware auto-completion. It furthermore shows code errors on the fly (by putting a marker inside the margin next to the offending line).
So far, C++, C# and Python are natively supported. However, the plugin has an easily accessible API to add support for more languages.
There are other plugins but with the exception of Jedi (for Python only) nothing comes even close to working properly.
Take a look at supertab: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1643
I realise this isn't quite answering your question, but have you looked at running vi within an IDE ?
viPlugin works with Eclipse and is a pretty good vi emulation. Since it runs within Eclipse you get all the code completion that Eclipse provides. Eclipse isn't just for Java, btw. It works with a variety of languages and may well cater for what you need.
This is the direction I took when I reluctantly realised that vi by itself wasn't providing as much help as I needed when developing, but I was reluctant to give up the power of the editor.
I use NetBeans with the jVi plugin. It gives me the editing power of vi with the intelligent auto-completion features of NetBeans.
It depends on your language. For c++, for example, there is omnicppcomplete.
Maybe this article will help, I haven't tried it to be honest but it looks suitable.

Skins in delphi7

I wish to skin my aplication and have noticed that there appears to be no obvious way to do this.
I am used to skinning files for java and wondered if there was any way of changing the appearance of the "standard" delphi7 application.
Edit:(taggs)
Have you looked at SpTBXLib?
http://www.silverpointdevelopment.com/sptbxlib/index.htm
I use the Developer Express Skins library. This works well for standard components, and their own. You can create custom skins, or use their standard ones which include nicely designed haloween and winter ones. They also have a ribbon control to make your app Office 2007 look.
I've seen positive comments about AppFace, but I have not tried it.
Looks like there are some relevant links in this forum thread
Appface looks promising with the extreem looks and the need for just 2 lines of code. but thats a lot of money to make four buttons and a editbox look nice.
linkrank does the same thing but does not look as good and costs even more this time about 180.
Again both seem to boast that you only need 2 lines of source code and theme file.
the link to given forum did not seem to yeild any results apart from these two.
Would be br8 to find a free version even if i have to put in more work myself.
Edit: "suipack" is yet another tool for the same job
Re-Edit: VCL seems to be the basis of what is needed here some copenents listed on
http://www.vclcomponents.com/catalog/Delphi_Skin
Re-Edit-2: found a freeware version here
Re-Edit-3: added coponent but not only is there no help file with this it seems to be incomplete as throws a cannot find "skins.pas" exception
http://www.vclcomponents.com/Delphi/Form_Enhancement/VclSkin-info.html
gone evaluate it and post results back up.
After spending hours installing it or not,, as the case was,, installed the unicodecontroler and the toolbar2000 but the toolbar200 seemed to have a issue with the library path and after i fixed it it would not alow me to reinstall, i had to do this as SpTBXLibDsgn_*.dpk would not install due to not finding reference of tb2kdsgn_d7.dpk..
this results in me going ARRRRRGGGHHHHHH and bashing my head on the wall, the only method for creating skins for free in delphi7 comes as 7 manual installs(as a noob this was hard)
and thenn when i make a boo boo it wont let be uninstall,,, ouch
looks like there will be no styles for me....
Edit: if anyone wants to go for styles i seriously suggest the multiinstaller that i didnt see untill i had currupted my tbk2000 package :(
Another skinning component set for Delphi is AlmediaDev
AFAIK, there are two Delphi components available to skin your application without requiring any code, but both are not free
VCLSkin
SuiSkin

Resources