I have lots of components installed - trouble is when I want to find one I rarely use it takes ages to find it. I can look at the ALL choice which lists all components but finding one with say 'grid' in the title is still very time consuming. Is there a database of titles or (preferably) a text file I could interrogate and search?
Try DDevExtensions 1.61, it add ability to search for components for Delphi from version 5 and above, with other many improvement for the IDE.
Which version of Delphi? In recent versions, just click on the top of the palette and type "grid". Ctrl-Alt-P will focus the palette, and then you can just start typing.
In RAD2009 and RS2010, do this and it'll find all components with "grid" anywhere in the title.
Since you didn't specify which version of Delphi...
1) In older versions (D7 and before), you can right click on the component palette to see the properties. This shows all of the components you have installed one page at a time. It isn't searchable, but at least the list shows each component's name and package, so it's easier than using the popup hints on each individual component.
2) In Delphi 7, you can select View|Component List, which brings up a searchable alphabetical list of all components. Unfortunately, it only matches on the first part of the component name. The first version of the "new" tool palette had this same limitation.
3) DDevExtensions (free) allows partial string matches in the old component palette (D5-D7), and restores something like the old palette in newer versions of Delphi (D2005 and up). It's also included in Delphi 2010 for people who prefer that style. I like how the search works in Delphi 7, but in Delphi 2010, the filtering seems a little awkward to me. It filters the components and palette pages, but if you have matching components on more than one page, they aren't all shown at the same time. You still have to click on each individual page.
4) My favourite. I prefer the new tool palette (Delphi 2005 and up). Very configurable, lets me see the component names, shows components on more than one page at a time, dockable, etc.
Bottom line. If you don't have or don't like the new tool palette, get DDevExtensions.
Before Delphi 2005: Install DDevExtensions, then choose Tools -> DDevExtensions Options -> Component Selector -> Check the "Active" box, click OK
Delphi 2005 and later: Click in the component palette and type the name of the one you want.
Use GExperts - they help a lot.
Related
In translation editor, in RAD Studio XE7, is there a possibility, to filter only items (strings), that are actually visible to the user in runtime?
Here is how it looks like:
I can use "Show only strings" option in "Filters", which is nice, as it removes a huge lot of stuff, that cannot be translated at all, but there still is a majority of strings, that also don't need to be translated. The user will never see Caption.Font.Name of a TPanel, a version nor a whole bunch of other component properties. So in other words - can I filter only captions, hints and other "visible" stuff?
I am adding a "Delphi" tag, since it is the language I use, but it is really not language-specific or related question.
In Quickreport, when we click Save button, it will appears many option of extension (QuickReport file(.qrp), Excel spreadsheet (.xls), and so on).
I just need to display only QuickReport file as a filter extension option? Is it possible? I read QuickReport Help but found nothing.
Quickreport version 4.06
Find and delete (or comment out) the qrextra and qrhtml units in your uses clause, and remove the corresponding componnents (TQRXLSFilter, TQRExcelFilter, TQRHTMLDocumentFilter, TQRAsciiExportFilter, TQRCommaSeparatedFilter, TQRRTFExportFilter, and TQRWMFExportFilter) from any forms in your application. You'll find the full list of all of the available standard export filters in QRExport.pas.
(It's often important to include the version of any third party components you're using, particularly those that change drastically between versions such as QuickReports or Indy, in order to make it easier to answer your question.)
I have hundreds of components in my Delphi 2006 installation, but I always have trouble finding those I haven't used before and that may be the solution for what I need at the moment. I have many undocumented packages, but by the name of the component you can have an idea of what it does.
For example:
I need a RadioButton, so I have TRadioButton, TElRadioButton or TAdvRadioButton to choose which one has the custom properties that I need.
But when I click the Filter Button of the Tool Palette, I have to Type from the beginning of the component name. If I could have a field editor where I could type only a part of the name and the Palette showed me the components that had that term in the middle of the name too, I would make my day!!!
Does anyone know how in Delphi 2006?
I know that Delphi XE2 has this filter field.
The DDevExtensions IDE extension (http://andy.jgknet.de/blog/ide-tools/ddevextensions/) has a Component Selector that does what you need
(also using D2006, so it definitely works)
After I installed cnPack, right clicking on a component in my form seems to have taken away any specific items that the component itself may have applied.
eg, right clicking on any Dev Express component will usually bring up version details. Now I get a bunch of other context menu items and the Dev Express ones have disappeared.
Is there a wizard or some other option I can disable to stop this? I can't find one anywhere.
Thanks
EDIT
Restarting Delphi fixed it in the short term - but has come back again so I'd still like to find a resolution to this....
Right-click menus are controlled by component editors, and AFAIK there can only be one component editor registered to a particular class type at a time. If CnPack's design-time package is loaded after DevExpress's design-time package, then CnPack's component editor will be the last one registered and take priority.
In a Delphi Form, I would like to replace one visual component with another. Example: I want to replace a Panel component with an ElPanel from a 3rd party package.
I would like all identical properties and events of the first component to be transferred to the new one, and all the components that belong to the first component (e.g. Toolbars, memos,status bars, etc.) to end up placed on the new component exactly where they were on the first one.
Is there a best/easiest way to do this other than adding the new component to the form and meticulously transferring every property, event and component to it one-by-one?
I do it as following:
Right click on the form and choose (View as Text).
Press Ctrl + F to search for the Component class name like TPanel and replace it with TElPanel
Switch back to back to the form (View as form)
In the interface section replace the TPanel with TElPanel.
if you have many components using GExperts will be more feasible solutions.
You can use GExperts or you can do it by hand.
To do it by hand, open the .dfm in notepad and replace all the class names. (Replace TPanel with TElPanel for example). When you've made all your changes, open the .pas file with Notepad, and do the same thing.
Make sure you add the required units to your uses clause.
Then open the form in the IDE and clean up any mismatched events or unknown property problems.
If I recall the excellent free GExperts plugin does this. Right click your form and select "Replace Components". http://www.gexperts.org
IMHO, the big drawback of the Replace component GExpert is that it changes the order of the components in the source code. That is not very VCS friendly. :-)
If you have other components inside a container doing this replacement with GExperts will cause some ugly exceptions and possibly unexpected behaviour in the IDE.
So, the best solution is to edit the .dfm file where you want (inside or outside the IDE) and replace manually the types of the components that you want to change. Maybe it will cause some exceptions too, but the IDE will managed them.
If you do it inside the IDE, after switching to design view if you save the .dfm inmediately the IDE will ask you to change the type of the variables related to the components you touched, liberating you to do it.
To convert between text and binary dfm formats, use the convert.exe tool in the Delphi bin\ directory. – Tim Knipe (Oct 28 at 4:15)
You can also use the context menu of the form designer - at least with BDS 2006. It's the last menu item ("Text-DFM" in a German IDE).
In my project I had to convert few doezens forms from one set of components to another.
I have created small perl script to convert components and its properties and do all neccesary mapings.
The script is quick&dirty solution but it is highly configurable. It scanns all dfm and pas files in project direcotory and convert dfm components definitions according to rules that you should provide in ObjectBeginFound, PropertyFound, ObjectEndFound procedures/events.
DFM files should be in text mode. Tested on Delphi 5 files. I don't know if it will be compatible with newer versions. Please send posts if you find it out.
USAGE:
perl.exe cxdfm.pl > logfile.txt
DOWNLOAD LINK
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15887789/cxdfm.pl