There are many questions on zipping in Delphi, anyway this is not a duplicate.
I am using ZipForge for zip/unzip capability in my application.
Currently I use 2 features of ZipForge:
1) zip and unzip (!)
2) password protect the archives
Now I am removing the password from all the archives so I need only to zip and unzip files. I zip them just for minimizing bandwith when uploading/downloading files from the server. So my idea is to process all files once for unzipping them (with password) and rezipping them without password.
I have nothing against ZipForge, anyway it is an extra component, every time I upgrade to a newest Delphi version I have to wait for the new IDE support and moreover the more components the more problems during the installation (I don't mention the cost since it is very low, and replacing a component with some other thing costs time, so it is not a cost issue).
So since what I do is very simple I'd like to replace ZipForge with 2 simple functions using the ZLib unit.
I found (and tested) the functions here on Torry's.
What do you think of using Zlib unit? Do you see any potential problem that I would not have with ZipForge? Can you comment on speed?
Well, ZLib out-of-the-box is not ZIP and if you need to create ZIP files which should be unpacked by third-party software, you will have to write extra code to actually ZIP files. If you use your own code to perform both compression and decompression, you can go with ZLib. But still you will be reinventing the wheel by creating your own convention of passing file names etc. And you still need to use a third-party library.
Related
What are the best practices for where a cross-platform FireMonkey program should put INI files? Are INI files even the right approach?
For Android: in "shared storage"
For MacOS: in INI file
https://delphihaven.wordpress.com/2015/06/11/ccr-prefsinifile-on-github/
CCR.PrefsIniFile on GitHub by Chris Rolliston (he is on stackoverflow also: https://stackoverflow.com/users/2778930/chris-rolliston)
Just a small post to say the the native Preferences API wrappers for Android, iOS and OS X I published to Google Code a while back are now on GitHib:
https://github.com/chrisrolliston/CCR.PrefsIniFile
Both the Android and Apple versions should also now compile in XE8.
If you are searching for one location that will fit all platforms then I'm afraid you won't find it.
You see each platforms has its own preference on where the settings files are stored.
So you should read each platforms guidelines and make sure your program uses those locations.
Failing to do so and trying to save the settings in some different folder might fail completely as many platforms limit of which folders can your application access at all.
Now as for which format should you use? Should this be INI files or something else?
On windows it is completely up to you which format you use. You can use system registry, INI files (pretty common), XML files (becoming quite common lately) or even some custom formats like Typed files (binary files) that Delphi is capable of working with.
But this does not apply to all platforms. Some platforms might even limit you in which format you store your settings.
So again you should read the platform preferences on this matter and adapt.
In windows INI files became ubiquitous as a fast, easy to use method. But as they became larger they became much slower and it was difficult to implement structured storage. Hence the move away from INI files towards Registry/Registries. But that is not an option for cross platform, so there has been some drive back towards INI file structures, but depending on size this could still be slow. One of the more interesting approaches I have seen is in this skill sprint which (mis)uses JSON to create files equivalent to old INI files (and allows structure too). See here JSON - the new INI file. As to where, I think you need to read the recommendations for each target as the recommended location could be different for each.
I have an old software that I believe was done in Delphi and uses .rep files for reports.
Is there any way to figure out what report builder was used? Opening the file in HEX or Text only doesn't really tell a lot, it shows quite some text that is used within the report though.
Thanks
Patrick
Candidates:
A Visual dBase file, it that case it should be mainly ASCII text, but your question seems to rule that out.
A (SAP) Business Objects Report file
An Act! (CRM software) report file
A Grand Theft Auto San Andreas game replay file.
Since you say it is 'used for report', BO is your best bet. It was acquired by SAP in 2007, before that it was standalone software produced by Business Objects AG.
So you probably need a copy of that to open the file.
Maybe there are other ways to inspect/use the file, other people have faced the same problem
Quite simply without access to the source code, you have no way of knowing. None of the major third party Delphi reporting components (Quick Reports, Rave, Crystal, Report Builder, Fast Reports/Free Report) I'm aware of use *.rep as their default file extension. That isn't to say that the program authors didn't use one of these components, but opted to replace the tool's default extension with *.rep. There's also the possibility that the program's authors used their own custom and proprietary reporting system.
You could potentially take one of these .Rep files and try and load them into each Delphi reporting tool and see what the results are but I think your chances of success are exceedingly low.
I have two PCs both with XE2. I thought that I had installed identically on both but have problems installing 3rd party packages on one while the other is just fine.
I want the same on both anyway. The easist would probably just to "migrate" the working set-up by moving in into my Dropbox folder. Can I do that? If so, how?
If not, can I (easilly) backup my registry settings on one machine and then import them on the other?
I suppose I could just sort out the problem on the one PC, but am not having much luck so far. I would rather invest the time in only having one Delphi setup. And since I am moving lots of other stuff to DropBox anyway ...
The tool for this is now built into Delphi XE8 and higher.
It's found here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\20.0\bin\migrationtool.exe
Online documentation:
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Rio/en/Settings_Migration_Tool
Install CnPack wizards from http://www.cnpack.org
From the CnPack toolbar select IDE Config Backup/Restore (image below) and save this file somewhere safe
Copy the components to the second delphi machine . Keep the exact same directory structure.
I store my components as follows this helps backing up, moving etc., but you can use your own structure
D:\components_bds\DCU
D:\components_bds\BPL
D:\components_bds\ComponentsThemselves
Use the restore config file from CnPack to restore your components on the new machine
This is also useful if your testing components that you plan to remove later and keeping a backup of your installation incase something goes wrong you can save time with new delphi installation if hard drive dies. Keep a copy on flashdrive or somewhere safe
You may compare/diff the config file created by cnPack using a tool like Beyond Compare and see what the differences are to find out why third party components give problems on one of the machines. It may be a Delphi registry/installation problem or a problem in the paths of the thirdparty components. Components need to be installed in an order perhaps it did not find the needed dcu or dll it depends on.
I don't know of any way to do so with DropBox. Here's an old post I made (related to Delphi 7, but with correction of registry keys still applicable) in the CodeGear newsgroups; hopefully it will help.
(It probably goes without saying, but back up the existing registry settings on the destination machine before starting by using RegEdit and exporting them, just in case. You'll at least be able to get back to the point you're at now if something goes wrong by deleting the imported entries and then importing the saved ones.)
You can't, without some difficulty anyway. (Especially if you have
third party components installed, as they may have placed files in the
%SYSTEM% folder you may not know about.)
You may be able to (for going from the old computer to the new
computer running the same exact version of Windows!) by exporting the
registry keys under HKCU\Software\Embarcadero and
HKLM\Software\Embarcadero from the old machine, and then after
installing Delphi on the new machine (in the exact same folder
location) importing that registry file.
Many of the compiler, linker, and other settings are configured on a
per-project basis, and should transfer over when you move your source
code to the new machine.
Third-party components are a problem, as I mentioned above. You may be
able to get away with using the registry export/import if you copy
each third-party component set from the old computer into exactly
the same location on the new machine before importing the registry
file. You'll probably have to track down some .BPL files that end up
in the $(BDS)\Bin and possibly other folders under the $(BDS)
tree; the IDE will tell you about missing stuff when you try and start
it. Make sure you answer "Yes " when asked if you want to try and load
it again next time!
Most of my development is hobby stuff or wannabe releases. Instead of dying trying to move my XE2 Pro from my Dell Inspiron N7110 Win 7 machine to my new Win 10 SSD machine, I'm seriously thinking of switching to Lazarus. I've used Lazarus 2.x with Indy 10, ZeosLib, and Firebird and successfully created a working distributed internet system. I also created Lazarus version of my XE2 Blackjack program. When compared to XE2, Lazarus (IMO) has only two weakness and neither are deal breakers for me. BTW, I have successfully duplicated Lazarus (with all installed components) from one machine to another simply by copying and pasting the Lazarus directory and it works. Try that with Delphi.
Sam
I've never used the checksum when downloading various executables or zip files from the Internet. I know it is used to check for consistency and add a bit of security. But is it necessary for when you download from a respectable project like Apache or Microsoft. How many of us actually use the checksums or hashcodes to verify the contents?
FYI, please let me know if I have strayed too far from StackOverflow's acceptable content.
When downloading files where integrity is critical (an iso of a linux distribution for example) i tend to md5sum the download just in case.
The source may be trusted, but you never know when your own NIC's hardware may start to malfunction.
Another use is to verify that a file that you already have is the same (i.e. unaltered, uncorrupted and as current) as the file available for download from the trusted source.
This might occur if
You have previously downloaded the file
You got the file from another site
You got the file from a network share
Someone gave you the file on a CD / flash drive / etc
You used some other method of avoiding a potentially long download
This is so that you can check the integrity of the file. I use it all the time. You basically just run some program that will produce a MD5 checksum, or whatever hashing method is used, on the file and see if the two checksums match. If not, then the files are different. However, note, that it is possible to have two files that yield the same checksum, but the likelihood you will run into this comparing two files of the same size is pretty low, unless you are contriving the example.
This is very useful. I found a bug in a CD burning program recently; I kept having a problem with a particular file on a particular computer. I finally just compared the checksums of the file from the CD and the one on the original computer, they were different, and I was able to solve the problem!
Imho it's only useful if you have downloaded a large file and want to check if it's corrupted before re downloading it (i.e. if application is not installing correctly).
To be sure that the file you download is the good one file and no other modified by some others with malicious intentions. As this information in Apache says:
"Any attacker can create a public key and upload it to the public key servers. They can then create a malicious release signed by this fake key. Then, if you tried to verify the signature of this corrupt release, it would succeed because the key was not the 'real' key. Therefore, you need to validate the authenticity of this key."
To verify you can follow the steps here.
Although you are choosing to download from a trusted source (e.g. Apache.org) your download request will likely be served by a mirror site. The trusted site in question does have the resources to serve all requests so mirrors serve a valuable function. However, the trusted site does not necessarily have full control over the mirror site and it's possible that the mirror's owner (or a third party) could replace the mirrored executable with malicious code. By verifying the trusted source's hash against the downloaded file you insure that it has not changed in transit (for whatever reason.)
It's used for both integrity reasons (particularly on ftp sites, where you may have mistakenly downloaded in ascii mode). Additionally, it can be used to verify the download has not been altered, assuming you download from location a and get checksum from location b (often download is from mirror, and hash from official site).
For integrity purposes, though, signing a file is going to be more useful than just hashing it.
I use MacPorts on Mac OS X, which is a source based package manager; each Portfile contains a description of how to download, patch, compile, and install a piece of software on Mac OS X. Included in the Portfile is the checksum of the particular version of the tarball to download. This helps ensure the integrity of the file from many possible problems; sometimes, people will update a tarball without incrementing the version number, which may cause patches to fail to apply or the code to break under certain conditions, or sometime the package may become corrupted, or an attacker may be tampering with the software in the hopes that you will install it.
So, I will have to say that yes, I use the checksums every time I install software (though my package manager does it automatically for me, I don't do it directly). And even if you are downloading manually from a respectable project, you many wish to download the code itself from a faster, closer mirror, and then verify the checksum against a copy downloaded from the more trusted master server; that helps keep it more difficult to attack as multiple servers would have to be compromised rather than just one mirror.
I've got simple java-based ppt->swf sub-project that basically works. The open source software out there, OpenOffice.org and JODConverter do the job great.
The thing is, to do this I need to install OO.o and run it in server mode. And to do that I have to install OO.o, which is allot of software (~160MB) just to convert the source PPT files to an intermediate format. Also, the public OO.o distributions are platform specific and I'd really like a single, cross platform set of files. And, I'd like to not interfer with a system's current settings, like file extension associations.
As things are now, my project is not particularly 'software distribution friendly'.
So, the questions are:
Is it possible to create a custom distribution of OpenOffice? How would one about this?
How lightweight and unobtrusive can I make the installation?
Would it be possible to have a truly cross platform distribution since there would be no OO.o UI?
Are there any licensing issues I need to be aware of? (On my list of things to check out, but if you them already then TIA!)
I have no idea to accomplish such task, but Microsoft has its PPT viewer that is for free and very small, maybe in .NET (C#) you can use some kinda function to save into a intermediate file that you need...
and by the way, how are you handling slide transictions?
I found a software that does that but you need MS PPT installed.
this was just an idea, now regarding your actually question:
you can create your own installation of OO, just jump to the Installation project and follow the lines.
I did not read 'til the end, but from the 1st paragraph it seams what you are searching for.
No, not unless you are neck deep coding in the OpenOffice project.