Delphi: Free TSynEdit replacement - delphi

What's the best free replacement for TSynEdit? As I can see, it is developed very slow. Want to find some replacement for it. Or, may be, the version from another maintainer.
Need Delphi 2010 compatibility.

SynEdit works fine under D2010. There's one notable bug involving the Enter key not working under certain conditions. A patch for it can be found about halfway down the page on this thread. Search for // GB: BUG FIXED
Aside from that, it should work. Are you having some specific issues with it?

You can try out Scintilla. As of version 2.x it supports "virtual space" (most important feature for me - after syntax highlighting) and has more features like CodeFolding, Annotations http://www.scintilla.org/ScintillaDoc.html#Annotations, MultipleSelections, and many more.
AFAIK there is no wrapper for Delphi that is up-to-date and works with Unicode/D2009+.
I've created a project at http://code.google.com/p/dscintilla/ which should be in 'beta stage' in a week (or so).

I have never used SynEdit myself, but have always believed it to be the best free open-source advanced editor component for Delphi. Because it is open-source, you can yourself alter it to suit your needs.

Related

Toolbar 2000 under Delphi XE?

Does the old Toolbar 2000 package (preferably with the TBX extension) compile and work under Delphi XE?
Are anyone using "Tb2k" and TBX these days?
Do TB2K and TBX compile?
Toolbar2000 does. It is used as part of SpTBX (see below.) TBX I'm afraid I don't know - development ceased a few years ago and I upgraded to SpTBX. I would recommend you do the same - it's actively developed / maintained and you probably won't end up asking questions like this about it in a couple of years (hopefully!)
(I know 'upgrade' wasn't what you asked, sorry. It's what I would recommend. I don't like the situation where I'm using third-party code which is no longer maintained, and I have to take that task upon myself and upgrade it each version.)
Is anyone using TBX?
Most people these days do not use TBX - development on it has ceased. Instead, they use SpTBX, developed by Silverpoint Development. It used to be a patch to TBX (so you'd have three layers: TB2K followed by TBX followed by SpTBX) but these days is directly based on TB2K, so it's only two layers.
The installation instructions are easy to follow, and its installer installs TB2K as well.
SpTBX provides extra controls on top of those provided by TB2K, and also provides skin support. It comes with a skin editor if you want to create your own skins. Many of the ones its shipped with I would never use in commercial software, but the Office 2003- and Office 2007-style skins are excellent.
One of the demo SpTBX applications with the Office 2007 Blue skin
Upgrading from TBX: Most TBX components have direct analogues in the SpTBX library, and renaming them in the DFM and form file and opening the form will be a good start. (Or use GExperts.) Some properties and events have changed or gone, which is annoying. I found I could generally figure out how to achieve the same thing pretty easily - it took a day or so to upgrade a large application for me - but you will find it's not a direct smooth transition.
You can download the 2.2.2 sources and modify them by opening the Delphi 2009 package (tb2k_d11.dpk and tb2kdsgn_d11.dpk) files and saving them as a new name, which creates a new copy. Change the NAME SUFFIX from _d11 to _d15, to follow the existing convention, which is useful although a dated technique. For our purposes d15 in this case means a delphi XE package (delphi version 15.0).
Or you can download my copy, which I did this to already (tb2k22_xe.zip). Just open up the project groups, and install the packages. Note that it seems this code is dual licensed, and to "redistribute" such a trivially modified copy of this code, my changes must be licensed under the GPL, and so, to avoid GPL contamination you should email Jordan Russell and ask for permission to relicense these changes/updates under his Toolbar2000 commercial license, if you wish to use them in a closed source commercial license. Or you can repeat the steps I followed, and avoid GPL contamination. Better still, give Jordan Russell $30 and become a paying customer, and prove that the good-old days are not completely gone, when a guy who wrote a nice component for delphi, got people handing him money, left right and center.
I realize this is an old question.
I am still using TB2K in delphi 5 apps. I've also used TBX in combination.
Some people refuse to use newer delphi versions simply because the old delphi products were almost just as good (not quite but still) since they have an infinitely expandable component system.
Doesn't SpTBXLib and TBX violate the Toolbar 2000 licenses considering that it modifies the TB2K without the permission of Jordan Russell? Or did these products get permision from Jordan Russell to release modifications and patches? This all seems to be jumping through a bunch of annoying hoops that a BSD/MIT style license would solve. Even if SpTBXLib and TBX are violating Russell's terms, he's probably okay with it if someone emails him, but I'm not 100 percent certain - it's a bad assumption to make. These projects should clearly say in their README or on their Github site that they have gotten the permission.
Also, I was one of those people who paid Jordan Russell ... to bring back the good old days of delphi developers paying other developers for their work (instead of GPL cult nonsense where programmers go home starving). The trick would be somehow for Russell to offer it BSD while getting paid still, which might prove difficult. It seems the GPL is actually a way for developers to restrict their software, not to free it up.. what a joke.
Free software foundation = Restrictive Software Foundation
One option would be to make it BSD/MIT and ask for donations, but I doubt Jordan Russell would go for it. Might be worth a try. Or if he is only making a few bucks from this every year, then it would be no big deal to just release it BSD. I'm not sure how many copies he sells per year. It's none of our business - but it sort of is in the sense that we are willing to make improvements to his code and not charge money, so we are part of the source too! May the source be with you.
You can check this
I think XE is very similar to D2010
You should check spTBX at http://www.silverpointdevelopment.com
It builds on tb2k without dependancies, installer is there and it works on unicode delphi.

good version control software for Delphi 2009 [closed]

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does anyone have a good idea for what I might use ?
Its not specific to Delphi but SVN is the way to go for version control.
server - subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/)
windows client - TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/)
I use Team Coherence, from QSC. This integrates nicely into Delphi (I think the standalone desktop client app itself is written in Delphi too) and it can be used over a network/the web etc.
I'm a 'lone developer' who uses it to get to my source code wherever I am. It does all the obvious source control stuff pretty well (versioning, history, comparisons), and I'm happy with it.
It's not free, but if you want something that really does plug into the Delphi IDE, and that 'understands' Delphi sourcecode and projects (for instance, checking out a form is a single operation - .DFM and .PAS are intelligently linked together in the mind of TC), then it's worth a look. I'm quite happy with it.
All version control systems should work just fine for you. You do not need a specific version control system for Delphi, or any language for that matter.
Some ideas:
Subversion (Central and simple to install and learn)
Mercurial (Distributed and easy to learn)
Git (Distributed; best for Linux, not Windows; does everything)
I have moved away from VSS to Subversion with Tsvn, you can look previous question I asked about replacing the VSS for better VCS with Delphi Moving away from VSS.
And to make the moving to Subversion easy, use VisualSvn server, which is very easy to install and work with.
The good thing about moving to Subversion that next Delphi version will include support to it from inside the IDE.
I use subversion with the jedi integration. I wrote a series of posts on using subversion with Delphi:
http://sourceitsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/07/starting-out-with-delphi-and-subversion.html
http://sourceitsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/07/subversion-server-options.html
http://sourceitsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/07/common-tasks-with-subversion.html
http://sourceitsoftware.blogspot.com/2008/08/subversion-add-ins-for-delphi.html
I would like to recommend Plastic SCM. We used Team Coherance before, but due to multiple reasons (slow, bugs, etc) we have chosen for Plastic SCM: http://www.codicesoftware.com/xpfront.aspx
Very good support (email reaction mostly within 1 hour!) and it has fabulous branch and merging support! Task driven parallel development with multiple developers works much better than traditional version systems like TC, CVS, etc.
I'd recommend a DVCS (Distributed Version Control System). I'm not going to give a specific one to avoid potential flaming, but the big ones are Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar, all of which are quite good.
These allow you the benefit of working offline and working from any computer, while still maintaining version history.
Also, since it's distributed, you don't need some central server, so if a computer crashes, you're still good to go.
Here is a good article about DVCS vs traditional VCS (such as SVN).
First, don't choose your version control system primarily on the level of integration with the IDE!
Subversion, as many have said, is pretty much the de-facto standard for modern version control software.
Personally I just use TortoiseSvn, and don't worry about integration into the IDE.
If you want integration into the IDE, look at SourceConnexion from Epocalipse. They have a D2009 version.
Codegear have hinted that SVN integration could well be in the next release of delphi anyway.
As an earlier poster mentioned Team Coherence, I thought I would add some comments based on my experience of it.
I used Team Coherence (TC) as part of a small team of three to four people for two years, and then we swapped to AccuRev. I would say that for a single developer with simple version control requirements TC would be OK, especially if they use Delphi.
However, (amongst other things) we needed to be able to:
Support mainline development whilst also keeping a release branch for urgent customer bug fixes.
Link items in our bug-tracking system with sets of checked-in changes ("change-set tracking").
We found that using TC to do branching was very confusing. It is much easier to support our branching requirements with AccuRev.
In addition TC didn't support grouping checkins into change-sets, and so it couldn't really fulfil requirement 2.
However, AccuRev is more expensive than TC. Subversion is free, and seems to support branching very well, but as I have only used it for very small projects at home I will leave it to others more experienced with it to recommend it or not.
In short, if you need to support multiple branches, or change-set tracking I would not recommend TC. If, however, your version control requirements are simple (check-in, check-out, version differencing) and you use Delphi, then TC may be an appropriate choice.
The company I work for uses Vault but would I advise it? Well, it's better than VSS that we used before.
We combine this with SourceConneXion which is a Delphi IDE plugin and which supports several source control products, including Vault, Subversion, CVS and whatever else you might think of.
Since we're developing in both Delphi and .NET, these products work quite well for my organisation.
Btw, if you're a single developer and only want one license then Vault is free!
We are using since two years JediVCS (part of the Jedi Proyject). It's stable and work outside the IDE (standalone application) or Integrated with the Delphi IDE.
Work with a lot of servers:
DBISAM 3.x
FlashFiler 2.13 (Open Source version)
Firebird 1.0x, 1.5x, 1.5x embedded (with support for characterset configuration)
Oracle 8.x, 9.x, 10.x
MSSQL 7, 8, 2000 (with both supported security models ("Trusted NT security" or "SQL
based")
MySQL 3.23x, 4.0x, 4.1x
NOTE: Here you can see a video of installation process, the integration with Delphi IDE, Check-in and Check-out files process...
Regards.
Try Plastic SCM together with SourceConneXion integration.
Take a look at the following posts here:
http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2008/06/branching-and-merging-with-delphi-part.html
http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2008/06/branching-and-merging-with-delphi-part_02.html
Actually it is a very strong combination since Delphi is probably the greatest IDE/language combination for most tasks, and Plastic the strongest for parallel development.
If you are a single developer, then Perforce is a good choice. It's free for 1 or 2 developers. You can use the command line or the gui (P4V) which makes it pretty easy. I've used it for a few years now, and even when I had an issue with it about a year ago, their support was great, treated me like a paying customer, which I'm not. It's easy to set-up, and there's plenty of documentation. It also integrates into other applications like Teamcity and Jira/Fisheye.
Just my 2 cents.
Tortoise SVN
Complicated at first but very reliable

FxCop/StyleCop for Delphi?

Does anyone know of an equivalent to FxCop/StyleCop for Delphi? I would really like to get the automatic checking of style, etc. into Continuous Integration.
There's Pascal Analyzer from Peganza: http://www.peganza.com/products_pal.htm
I don't know how the features compare to FxCop, since I haven't really used either one.
The closest I've seen is CodeHealer from SOCK software. We use it, and we have integrated it into our FinalBuilder build. It differs from FxCop in one important way: It analyzes the source code, rather than the produced executable. It also doesn't check quite as much as FxCop does. But I think it is the best thing which is available in this category for Delphi.
Delphi 2009 support isn't there just yet, but they say they're working on it.
Delphi Code Analyzer is another one that is open source.
The DGrok project started with something like FxCop some years ago. The parser and analysis parts are still available, read more at "DGrok 0.8.1: multithreading, default options, GPL" - The parser is a .Net project but
DGrok is a set of tools for parsing
Delphi source code and telling you
stuff about it. Read more about it on
the DGrok project page.
There is a new Delphi plugin for Sonar, which uses a Delphi grammar to run automatic tests over the source code.
I've heard of something called Delforex but haven't used it myself (yet)
Delforex is great for actually formatting the code. It does not do much more than that though. (we have/do use it).
I would second the votes for either Pascal Analyzer or Code Healer.
Vaccano
Doesn't Delphi output .net compatible IL code? I haven't used it in an age but I thought newer versions output .net assemblies.
If so then I would have thought FXcop would work and you could always add some of your own custom rules to it. Stylecop would not work but you could at least get FXCop running.

Are there any support tools like coderush or resharper for F#?

Are there any support tools like coderush or resharper for F#?
Preview version of FSharpRefactor released in Visual Studio Gallery.
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/339cbae9-911d-4f99-9033-3c3564676f45
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6-YjUULNCA/
F# Refactor open source project on CodePlex (Apache license).
Take a look at the open-source Visual F# Power Tools project. They've got a rename refactoring, some code generation stuff (eg. record stub generation), graying out of unused declarations, as well as some other things. They're moving pretty fast at the moment, with lots of new features getting added all the time.
There's an effort to support F# in ReSharper via an external plug-in (itself written in F#). You can find preliminary info here.
FSharpRefactor 0.1 (Preview version) Released on the Visual Studio Gallery.
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/339cbae9-911d-4f99-9033-3c3564676f45?SRC=Home
Not yet, as far as I know. I was also looking for something similar to no success. I suspect as soon as F# hits VS2010 as its integral part, or even a bit earlier, such tools will eventually emerge.
As far as ReSharper is concerned, you may want to drop JetBrains a quick email, it would be interesting to know whether these guys have any plans regarding F#.
Since the push in f# is towards light mode the reformatting possible is likely to be both limited, and hard to implement.
Normally reformatting takes the structural information and uses that to create the textual position. In the case of #light the textual position (of indenting at least) is the structure. As such any reformatting would be at best to sort inter symbol spacing, hardly onerous to do yourself.
I would therefore not expect a commercial product for it at least until the 'proper' integration with the IDE (I do not consider the current CTP proper in this regard since several outstanding bugs with it exist which will not be fixed in 2008)
CodeRush is working in F# editor. At least some code assistance and code templates. But code templates are not defined yet (you have to create your own).

Whatever happened to jEdit [closed]

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I'm not sure if many people know about this text-editor?
jEdit was kinda big in 2004, but now, Notepad++ seems to have taken the lead(on Windows)
Many of the plugins haven't been updated since 2003 and the overal layout and usage is confusing...
I'm sure jEdit has many nifty features, but I'll be damned if I can find out where to find them and how to use them. Reading that manual is a fulltime job on it's own.
I've been using jEdit for a few years now, mainly on windows, but also on Ubuntu.
I use it for: SQL, awk, batch files, html, xml, javascript...
Just about everything except .NET stuff (for which I use Visual Studio).
I love it.
summary
I use jEdit because it has the right balance for me of ease of setting up vs. features and customisability. For me, no other editor strikes quite as good a balance.
cons
It can be a bit hard to make it do the things you want.
pros
I love the plugins
Being able to define my own syntax highlighting etc. is just what I want from a text editor.
The manual is very good and quite readable. I strongly suggest reading it through to get an idea of what jEdit can do for you. (In fact, I suggest this for any software you use)
It's cross-platform. I used it just on windows for a long time, but now I also use Ubuntu, and it works there: I can even copy the configuration files over from my windows machine, and everything works. Nice.
other editors
In the past I did take a look at Notepad++, but that was a while ago, and it didn't have a nice way to define your own syntax highlighting, which is important for me. I also paid for Textmate and UltraEdit at different times (both very good), but in the end, jEdit comes out on top for me.
I also used Eclipse for a year or so. It's fantastic, and it'll do anything you want, but you have to be really into Eclipse to get the most out of it.
I've occasionally wondered about the same thing (what happened to jEdit - though I'm not sure if that was your main question).
Apparently, the main developer, Slava Pestov, left the project in 2006 (to focus on Factor, and his studies), and the jEdit development has never really picked up again after that. Which is a shame. :/ (I haven't actually followed closely, but I guess it's telling that there has not been a major release of jEdit in the last 4 and half years.)
Now, while googling around, I found some info written by Slava himself. It seems at that time he not only gave up jEdit, but developing in Java altogether, after becoming "increasingly frustrated" with the language.
I've been using jEdit since 2003ish. I use it on my Ubuntu 8.04 box at home, however it does have a few bugs: sometimes when you click on a button which opens a dialog, such as "Open File", the dialog will be completely blank.
This could be a Java thing, but it seems a strange issue.
Other than that, I'm quite happy with jEdit - it's the best general editor I've found (so far) for Linux (ducks as hordes of Vi and Emacs users light up their flame cannons)
I like the XML Editor plugin: auto-completion when you close XML (including HTML) tags, plus if you specify a DOCTYPE it gives you auto completion.
There is also a handy plugin for visually viewing diffs between two files.
jEdit is by far, my prefered editor since 2010. It has a unique set of features that I didn't found in any other:
Multi OS: Win, Linux, Mac.
Portable: Just copy a folder and it is ready to use. All settings are kept in .XML and .properties files inside jEdit subfolder. This is crucial if you don't have admin rights on your enterprise workstation.
Search-Replace: The most enhanced I've seen in a text editor: Full Regex specification with Bean Shell scripting capabilities for back references. For instance: Let's say you want to apply an increment on every number found in your text (replace 1 by 2, 10 by 11 and so on). Just search for regex "(\d+)" and replace by a Java expression "Integer.parseInt(_1) + 1". It's just a simple example, but enough to show how powerful it is.
Database: Just select your SQL statement, press a button and get the resultset from MySQL, MsSql, Oracle, Teradata and any other Jdbc compatible RDBMS. Export results to csv. Works like a multi-database command line tool. Browse and navigate on your database schema. (SQL plugin).
Customization: Here is where jEdit shines. There are tons of features. The highlight is the ability to use any java API to expand it! Access them from your Beanshell scripting macros. Example: I needed a function that decode selected text from/to mime64. No problem! I Just downloaded a library from commons.apache.org and accessed it from a jEdit macro. It's just unbeliveable how expandable jEdit can be with this feature.
Highlight: Select a word or phrase and it is highlighted right away in the entire text. The mini-map of ocurrences is shown in the scrollbar. It allows quickly find, for example, a respective css style in separated file just using the mouse. No need for Ctrl+F or type anything. It works even on ordinary txt files. (Highlight Plugin)
Plugins: FTP, XML, Text Diff, Themes, Text Tabs, Highlighter, character map, Mail, Whitespaces, Abbrevs, Minimap...there are hundreds of them.
There are dozens of other nice features that I won't describe here in order to keep this answer not too long. The complete article can be found here and the mime64 example here.
At first glance, jEdit is just another text editor. The full capabilities come into light when you start playing with it's endless customization/expansion power. My initial reluctance of accepting a java-written text editor disappeared when I realize that only a java text-editor could be so extensible. Its initial drawback turned into it's main advantage.
I have been using jEdit for the last five years. And I agree with Mr. Mahan's comment above, jEdit has reached the "just works stage" and does not really need anymore development.
I mainly use it for PHP web development and have tried everything from commercial IDEs (DreamWeaver) to php designer, NetBeans, Eclipse, Apanta and Notepad++. And nothing comes close for customization possibilities. If the plugin does not exist, chances you can whip something together with a BeanShell Macro (assuming you want to dig into Java).
On Windows I use Notepad++ as well, but mainly as a Notepad replacement (I even renamed the notepad.exe)
At the end of the day it comes down to taste. What is important to you and what will make you more productive. A distracting GUI and fluffy features can take you away from what you should be focusing on.
And to boot I have converted a few developers to jEdit along the way.
At the risk of performing necromancy:
Because of the way it's been released the last decade or so, major Linux distributions usually lag quite far behind the latest stable version. The good news is that there are repositories to install and upgrade it automatically on Ubuntu and more.
For a couple years I shared configuration files between Windows, FreeBSD and Linux without problems. That's more than I can say about any other application I've ever used.
The only issue I've heard about is that it used to be slow back in the dawn of time. Now it's really fast.
Encodings and line endings are handled more seamlessly than any other editor except IntelliJ IDEA.
Vertical editing. Just hold down Ctrl and drag to create a rectangular (or even a zero-width vertical) selection.
Better search and replace than any other editor ever except IntelliJ IDEA. I just started writing a list, but it has to be seen to be believed. Just Ctrl-f and see for yourself.
I had to use during my vocational education for XML and XSLT. It had a lot of bugs and didn't work always. I couldn't get to like it, but if I had to test some XSLT I'd give it another shot. I found Notepad++ and I am more than happy with it for what I need.
To your question: Did you take a look at jEdit's plugin list? There are some plugins released 2008 and the latest version was released on 8th August 2008.
Myeah, I just installed the 4.3pre15(latest) and it does look a bit better.
Super feature is the automatic XML DTD creation you can get from one of the plugins.
Now THAT is awsome, especially for big files
After many years, jEdit remains my favorite free validating XML editor. I love the seamless combination of XML validation with plain-text editing features such as regex search-and-replace across multiple files.
I have used jEdit for a number of years, both on PC and Mac (a bit funky on the Mac).
Currently I use it primarily as a folding editor for a number of on-going documentation notes. I have use the folding at the text indent levels - an easy way to collapse and expand file sections, without any work to set up each section.
The feature I really like are the command shortcut alternatives you can set up, the tool bar icon control, and the the abbreviation expansions. The Plugins I especially favor are the BufferTabs to display rows of file/buffer names, and the Whitespace and TextTools.
I recently loaded the GroovyScriptEngine, in part because of the syntax coloring and control for groovy. I set up 2 seperate jEdit versions, in part to maintain seperate history lists, as I update a few dozen files repeatedly.
I loved Notepad++ on windows, but when I made the switch to Mac I was left behind. Since then I have been in tune with utilities that work across multiple platforms so that is why I switched to JEdit over 2 years ago and I have been loving it ever since. It works flawlessly on my Mac, never crashes, is fast, and has many many add-ons. It is based on Java so it works on many different platforms. I think Jedit is equal to or better than Notepad++
My favorite plug-in is the FTP module. I can open, edit and save files on my FTP server just as easily as if they were local.

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