temp.txt

source code for the Marco Cantu s book Delphi 2009 Handbook

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--></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">&#xA0;</script></span></div></div><div id="content-main"><div xmlns="" class="mthead" align="right"><h2>Thursday, November&#xA0;6,&#xA0;2008</h2></div><div xmlns="" class="mtentry"><a href="/blog/coderageiii_talks.html"><h2>My CodeRage III Talks</h2></a><div class="mtsummary">Although the program is still not final, I'm supposed to give 4 talks at the coming online CodeRage III conference by CodeGear.</div><div class="mtbody snap_shots"><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Although the program is still not final, I'm supposed to give 4 talks at the coming online <a target="_blank" href="http://conferences.codegear.com/coderage08">CodeRage III</a> (or CodeRage 2008) conference by CodeGear. These are the titles of the talks they've asked me to give:</p><ul xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">
      <li>Unicode in Delphi 2009</li>
      <li>Secrets of the Delphi 2009 RTL</li>
      <li>Fun Side of Delphi goes Unicode</li>
      <li>Generics &amp; Closures</li>
    </ul><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Looks this is going to be an interesting event... like those in the past, and you can attend from your computer, no need to travel. Now I wish, <a target="_blank" href="http://blogs.codegear.com/davidi/2008/11/05/38966/">like DavidI</a>, we could have an holographic conference one day. <br/>
    </p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">BTW, I'll launch my new Delphi 2009 book at the conference, and will probably have a discount for attendees. Stay tuned.</p></div><div class="mtposted">posted by 
    <a href="http://www.marcocantu.com" target="_blank">marcocantu</a> @ <a href="/blog/coderageiii_talks.html" title="permalink">12:36AM</a> | <a href="/blog/coderageiii_talks.html#FeedBack" title="comments">2 Comments
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        </a></div></div><br xmlns=""/><br xmlns=""/><div xmlns="" class="mtentry"><br/><div align="center"><a href="http://www.gurock.com/products/smartinspect/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="/images/ads/si-blue-468x60.gif" height="60" width="468"/></a></div><br/></div><br xmlns=""/><div xmlns="" class="mthead" align="right"><h2>Wednesday, November&#xA0;5,&#xA0;2008</h2></div><div xmlns="" class="mtentry"><a href="/blog/delphi_native_code.html"><h2>Delphi Native Code: Fast or Reliable?</h2></a><div class="mtsummary">Delphi for Win32 is a tool focused on native code. Delphi compiled programs are fast... but does this really matter? In my view, reliability and stability are more important.</div><div class="mtbody snap_shots"><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Delphi for Win32 is a tool focused on native code. Delphi compiled programs are fast... but does this really matter? There has been some debate over the last month, with CodeGear Product Manager Michael Swindell pushing Delphi for its fast compiled code, and Hadi Hariri and other bloggers disputing this idea. Truly, Microsoft .NET is not really slower than Delphi compiled code. So why does Delphi and its "traditional" Win32 support still matter, and matter quite a lot?</p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">In my view, reliability and stability are key factors, more then speed. The fact is you can be sure your Delphi application of 5 years ago can be easily moved to Vista and Unicode support, without a total rewrite as in case of a VB application moving to VB.NET. Similarly, you might not be using the latest, smartest, and coolest technology if you create a Delphi database application today, but you can be pretty sure it will keep running for a few years. This means you can embark on a long term project with limited fears (now that Delphi has left Borland for a more solid company).<br/>
    </p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">What about a .NET client/server application written today? Will you write traditional ADO.NET code, with no coolness factor? Will you use LINQ to SQL, which is being deprecated today? Will you use the Entity Framework, which looks great but is a brand new and far from stable technology? Will you wait for Oslo? And what about the user interface in case you don't care about the Internet? Will you use WinForms or the totally incompatible WPF? What will be around and kicking in five years time? That's very hard to know. <br/>
    </p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">The same dilemma was there in the Java world in the early years, but after some time things got stable. Yes, they are slower to move than on the .NET platforms (or so it seems to me) but large corporations with long terms investments need stable technology, not ever-evolving-forever-beta cool architectures. <br/>
    </p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">I keep thinking that if you can keep evolving a platform, adding new cool features, without disrupting existing investments you are doing your users base a huge favor.... Or am i getting too old to understand?</p></div><div class="mtposted">posted by 
    <a href="http://www.marcocantu.com" target="_blank">marcocantu</a> @ <a href="/blog/delphi_native_code.html" title="permalink">7:23PM</a> | <a href="/blog/delphi_native_code.html#FeedBack" title="comments">18 Comments
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        </a></div></div><div xmlns="" class="mthead" align="right"><h2>Monday, November&#xA0;3,&#xA0;2008</h2></div><div xmlns="" class="mtentry"><a href="/blog/d2009_update1_install.html"><h2>Installation Day: Delphi Update 1 and Open Office 3</h2></a><div class="mtsummary">I've installed the Delphi 2009 Update 1 using the internal utility. Fast and smooth, I have to say. And also installed the final release of Open Office 3, hoping to see an annoying bug fixed.</div><div class="mtbody snap_shots"><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">The first time, rather than downloading the Delphi 2009 Update 1 and installing it manually I decided to go for the automatic installation. All I have to do differently than the usual was to start the Delphi 2009 IDE on Vista with admin rights (or checking for updates would have simply failed, as usual). Soon after Delphi prompted me to download and install the update:</p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/" style="text-align: center;">
      <img height="406" width="521" src="/images/forblog/d2009_update_iderequest.jpg" alt=""/>
    </p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">I clicked the Download button (as I had already read the notes), followed a couple of extra steps and everything was very smooth. Don't know how much time it took, as I could basically keep working in the IDE for most time, and was doing other non-computer-based tasks as well. But downlaod took a minute or less, and installation was very fast. After restarting, my about box clearly tells me I have the update installed (without having to check the build numbers):</p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/" style="text-align: center;">
      <img height="544" width="595" src="/images/forblog/d2009_update_about.jpg" alt=""/>
      <br/>
    </p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Nice job CodeGear. It is not only relevant to make updates available, but also to make it easy for everyone to update. <br/>
    </p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">On a completely unrelated topic, I also installed Open Office 3, apparently a very nice and smooth version of the open source and extremely valuable alternative to Microsoft Office. I've used Open Office as my primary word processing and presentation software for a few years now, <span style="font-style: italic;">even if a currently own an Office license</span> (part of a deal, not paid separately). I find Open Office clean, powerful, and superior to Office in some areas. Its PDF (and SWF) support has been working for years. Using compressed XML files means I can have code that processes them. Multi-user editing is on par with Office. <br/>
    </p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">I heard that the Microsoft version will gain extra power in the future by providing integration with its (still to come) online version. Nice to know. I've been enjoying the Google Docs integration plug in I can use to import and exports local documents to Google Apps directly to and from Open Office, at the click of a button. Seems Microsoft will clone that, too.</p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Anyway, I'm nos sure if the footnotes trimming bug is fixed. I haven't seen it today, but it is too early to tell. I'll have to work on my book for a few days to see if things improve in that area. Beside that, I've seen a slightly improved user interface, faster times on some operations, but I was quite happy with the current version, so I don't have huge expectations for the features. I'll let you know in some time.</p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/" style="text-align: center;">
      <img height="337" width="439" src="/images/forblog/openoffice3about.jpg" alt=""/>
      <br/>
    </p></div><div class="mtposted">posted by 
    <a href="http://www.marcocantu.com" target="_blank">marcocantu</a> @ <a href="/blog/d2009_update1_install.html" title="permalink">7:31PM</a> | <a href="/blog/d2009_update1_install.html#FeedBack" title="comments">1 Comments
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        </a></div></div><div xmlns="" class="mthead" align="right"><h2>Friday, October&#xA0;31,&#xA0;2008</h2></div><div xmlns="" class="mtentry"><a href="/blog/delphi_2009_update_1.html"><h2>Delphi 2009 Update 1</h2></a><div class="mtsummary">A first update to Delphi 2009, fixing a number of serious bugs, is hitting the road as I post this entry.</div><div class="mtbody snap_shots"><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">CodeGear has announced on Developer Network the <a target="_blank" href="http://dn.codegear.com/article/38868">availability of an Update 1 for Delphi 2009</a> and C++Builder 2009. The site hosts also the <a target="_blank" href="http://dn.codegear.com/article/38782">complete list of reported bugs that have been fixed</a>. Still it looks that the <a target="_blank" href="http://cc.codegear.com/reg/delphi">download for registered Delphi user</a> is still not there. Now it is too late, I'll probably run the auto update on Monday (have to remember to start Delphi as administrator on my Vista box).</p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Looking at the bugs list it seems the areas with most improvements (or with originally more bugs, depends on how you want to put it) are the Ribbon Control, the Modeling and Class Explorer, and some floating point formatting routines and TEncoding methods. A few fixes are for generics and anonymous methods (but I have to say I find them very stable, despite minor issues). On the other hand I'll be happy to go on with my Ribbon chapter now that I have a more stable Ribbon... it was taking some extra time!</p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Seems this will add to an already very stable release, despite the large number of new features, and some quite radical changes like for strings.<br/>
    </p></div><div class="mtposted">posted by 
    <a href="http://www.marcocantu.com" target="_blank">marcocantu</a> @ <a href="/blog/delphi_2009_update_1.html" title="permalink">11:48PM</a> | <a href="/blog/delphi_2009_update_1.html#FeedBack" title="comments">5 Comments
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        </a></div></div><div xmlns="" class="mthead" align="right"><h2>Thursday, October&#xA0;30,&#xA0;2008</h2></div><div xmlns="" class="mtentry"><a href="/blog/EKON12_Report.html"><h2>EKON 12 Conference Report</h2></a><div class="mtsummary">This is a summary of my three days in Mainz, Germany, for the EKON 12 conference, which is still taking place.</div><div class="mtbody snap_shots"><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">I spent the last few days in Mainz, Germany (a very nice city, with an astonishing ancient cathedral), at the 2008 edition of the <a href="http://it-republik.de/entwicklerkonferenz/" target="_blank">EKON conference</a>, that is EKON number 12. This was in the same location of a PHP event, running in parallel.</p><h3 xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Monday</h3><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">On Monday I gave a full day tutorial on Unicode in Delphi. Too bad there were very few people. I think the topics is worth an in-depth look... and it takes several hours to delve in the changes to the string representation, UnicodeString, the new AnsiString type constructor, the UTF8 support, looking at Unicode Code Points, UTF formats, <em>graphemes</em>, new compiler warnings, new undocumented compiler settings, the RTL support for working with string made of several new classes, from TStringBuilder to TTextWriter, and all of the code porting techniques.</p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">In the evening there was a speaker event, but after some time I decided to get to the (far away) hotel served by a phantom shuttle bus (for a reason or another I was never able to get the shuttle over 3 days). I figured out I had some flue, so went to bed early.</p><h3 xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Tuesday</h3><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">On Tuesday the actual conference started. <a href="http://blogs.codegear.com/davidi/2008/10/28/38929" target="_blank">David I made an initial keynote</a> covering the &#x201C;status&#x201D; of Embarcadero Technologies and CodeGear, providing a broad overview and mentioning some of the new tools, like Delphi Prism. In the later technology keynote David I and a couple of &#x201C;techies&#x201D; showed Delphi 2009 Unicode support and DataSnap 2009 in actual demos, Interbase 2009 encryption features, an IntraWeb demo, a similar Delphi for PHP demo, and finally a very short demo of Delphi Prism, showing a simple application running on a Suse virtual machine with Mono installed.<br/>While these keynotes were interesting, there was little new to me. On the other hand I was really looking forward to hear <a href="http://barrkel.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Barry Kelly</a> (one of the Delphi compiler developers) introduce new language features in a first session and provide in-depth implementation information (particularly of anonymous methods and the way the capture variables and parameters in the current context). These were not easy sessions for some, but I have to say I liked them a lot, and found out many things I was not aware of.</p><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">I also gave a REST framework talk, with a fair number of people, but not all of them were Web developers... so I'm not sure how effective the talk was. I still hope someone at CodeGear builds on the idea, but I'm not sure at all. I might try to open up this to others, will blog about it in the future. In the evening, despite not feeling much better, I stayed for the &#x201C;Casino evening&#x201D;, played a (short) round of poker, than had an astonishing round at the roulette. I started betting on a given number and that number come out twice in a row (and I had left many chips on it!). While I kept betting on it and surrounding numbers, it was the turn of surrounding numbers, with some good wins. I won also on other numbers, with direct bets. In the end I had to bet very heavily to finish the chips, and it wasn't easy as I kept winning back some. But it was not for real money and the person running the game had to leave...</p><h3 xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Wednesday</h3><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">On Wednesday, I attended few talks, gave mine on generics and anonymous methods (with a good crowd of interested people, I hope explaining them using many examples helped), walked out of the convention center to reach (in a minute or so) the downtown shopping area, buy a couple of presents for my kids, made a short visit of the ancient cathedral, chat a little more with a few fellow speakers, try to make sense of a hacked Linux server, and go to the airport to catch a flight.</p><h3 xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/" style="font-weight: bold;">Ketchup Considered Harmful</h3><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Every time I have to leave something in the Frankfurt airport. Last time it was a food thermometer with a sharp point, this time a bottle of ketchup (a nice present from the conference organizers), so liquid to look like a dangerous weapon. It might as well be, in the hands of the wrong guy. Follow speakers, place yours in checked-in bags (I had none), or drink before leaving. At least last year in the Netherlands we drank my bottle of wine (another non-airline-friendly present) before leaving the conference.</p><h3 xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">Overall EKON 12<br/>
    </h3><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">It was a nice conference, with some very interesting talks and many above-average ones. Most of them where from German speakers, so I didn't attend those and I had to leave one day early for family reasons. However it was a conference with a reduced attendance. There are lots of new features in the recent versions of Delphi, but most people seems slow to catch up... or prefer using other events and online opportunities for learning about them. Maybe they'll be eager to buy new books. But I think conference make a lot of sense, also because they offer a great opportunity for mingling with fellow developers and some experts, and discuss features and trends at length and more openly then with other means. We'll see hope the coming online CodeRage conference does in terms of attendance. But what about a Delphi event in the US, would you (particularly those of you who live there) consider attending one?</p></div><div class="mtposted">posted by 
    <a href="http://www.marcocantu.com" target="_blank">marcocantu</a> @ <a href="/blog/EKON12_Report.html" title="permalink">4:49PM</a> | <a href="/blog/EKON12_Report.html#FeedBack" title="comments">0 Comments
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        </a></div></div><br xmlns=""/><br xmlns=""/><div xmlns="" class="mtentry"><br/><div align="center"><span><script type="text/javascript"><!--
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--></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">&#xA0;</script></span></div><br/></div><br xmlns=""/><div xmlns="" class="mthead" align="right"><h2>Monday, October&#xA0;27,&#xA0;2008</h2></div><div xmlns="" class="mtentry"><a href="/blog/light_on_delphi_prism_oxygene.html"><h2>Embarcadero Shines Light on Delphi Prism: it is Oxygene!</h2></a><div class="mtsummary">The Delphi Prism press release has hit the web. I guess this makes it an announcement, this time... and we have more details.</div><div class="mtbody snap_shots"><p xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">The Delphi Prism <a href="http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=78294" target="_blank">press release</a> has hit the web. I guess this makes it an announcement, this time...Notice:</p><ul xmlns:gxi="http://geode.it/gxi/2.0/">