If you have ever worked with GPSes you probably know about the NMEA protocol. Many of the sentences there have got a time stamp that is in UTC (universal time coordinated - thank the French for the odd word order). Like me, you might have assumed that GPS works with UTC, but that is not … Continue reading GPS time vs. UTC
Month: July 2019
Common unit aliases for backwards compatibility to older Delphi versions
Backwards compatibility to older Delphi versions is an issue mostly encountered by component and IDE plugin developers. Borland, Codegear and Embarcadero actually did quite a good job in that area. Many ancient projects (at least back to Delphi 6) can simply be loaded into a later IDE and they just compile. The IDE usually makes … Continue reading Common unit aliases for backwards compatibility to older Delphi versions
Bugfix for Delphi IDE explorer in Delphi 10.3
In December 2018 I found out that some of the functionality in my Delhi IDE explorer was broken in Delphi 10.3, namely the function to select the current active control or automatically follow the focus. The reason was that the IDE now used the Screen.ActiveControlChanged event itself, disabling it for to my plugin. Today I … Continue reading Bugfix for Delphi IDE explorer in Delphi 10.3
GExperts and Delphi 10.3.2
Everybody and his brother - ahem - sister is blogging about the latest Update for Delphi 10.3 which has been announced two days ago. As always, Embarcadero's servers are overloaded and have been down for hours. I have now started downloading the ISO and my browser is telling me it should be finished in 90 … Continue reading GExperts and Delphi 10.3.2
Where does Delphi store the desktop settings? And what do they mean?
I keep forgetting this so this post is mostly so I can look it up: Delphi uses DST files to store the desktops - that is the layout of the various parts of the IDE. Theses files are in INI format and are stored in Delphi 2007 and later [users]\[username]\AppData\Roaming\[Company]\BDS\[version] e.g. c:\users\johndoe\AppdData\Roaming\Embarcadero\BDS\20.0 Delphi 2006 and … Continue reading Where does Delphi store the desktop settings? And what do they mean?
Delphi Shortcut Finder for 10.x
Nicholas Ring wrote a useful Delphi IDE plugin called Delphi Shortcut Finder and made it open source on GitHub. Unfortunately he updated it last in 2015, so it has become yet another abandoned Delphi tool. I had a need for something like this today and remembered the tool, but unfortunately not its name. So it … Continue reading Delphi Shortcut Finder for 10.x
TStringGrid has Rows and Cols properties
From the "How could I have missed this for decades?" department: The TStringGrid component in Delphi has got two interesting properties which I didn't know about: TStringGrid.Rows lists the strings and their associated objects for each row TStringGrid.Cols Lists strings with their associated objects for each column I found out about rows when I searched … Continue reading TStringGrid has Rows and Cols properties
Troubleshooting FTDI driver installation
So I don't forget: If the drivers for an FTDI USB-serial adapter don't install resulting in an "unknown device", try to remove all other USB connected devices. In my case it was a PeakCAN USB adapter, connected via a rather long USB extension cable, that caused the problem (not sure whether it was the adapter … Continue reading Troubleshooting FTDI driver installation