Starting with GExperts 1.3.20 calling the standalone Experts Manager displayed the error message “GExpertsInst is not a valid reference”. After that the tool actually works fine.
This bug has now been fixed in the current source code. I don’t think this minor inconvenience justifies a new release.
You may remember that I was forced to reduce GExperts support for Delphi 6 a while ago, because the IDE no longer started on my computer. It turns out that it was a GExperts bug after all.
The fix was simple once I knew what the problem was. And I only found out because carrchri, one of the few GExperts for Delphi 6 users, debugged it and told me. Thanks a lot!
When I was able to use the Delphi 6 IDE again I also fixed incompatibilities in the DFMs that prevented some of the dialogs open in Delphi 6.
So here is a new release. Apart from these two Delphi 6 related bug fixes there are some improvements to the code formatter also submitted by users:
Achim Kalwa again also submitted some patches for fixing bugs.
On top of that various High DPI display problems with Delphi 11 as well as a long standing display problem for owner drawn string grids (e.g. in the Uses Clause Manager) have been fixed.
The new GExperts version still supports all Delphi versions back to Delphi 6 (with the notable exception of Delphi 8).
As always: Report and any bugs you find (or contribute bug fixes) and also file feature requests or maybe even contribute implementations for these features.
It might take a while but I am always looking at those tickets when I find the time.
Head over to the GExperts download page to get it.
Discussion about this post in the international Delphi Praxis forum.
A long time ago I added the Identifier tab to the Uses Clause Manager in GExperts. It looks like this:
In this screen shot, I filtered for TWinControl and the expert found several matching entries, the two top ones in the unit Controls.
While this looks like a bug at first (indeed I have received a bug report for it) it is in fact a feature. There are actually two declarations of TWinControl in the unit Controls. The first is in line 212, which is a forward declaration like this:
type TWinControl = class;
The other is in line 1243, which is the actual declaration of the class:
TWinControl = class(TControl)
// class declaration goes here
end;
(Both line numbers are from Delphi 2007, they will vary in other Delphi versions.)
The expert lists them both and when the user clicks the “Open Unit” button (or presses Ctrl+O), it will then open that unit and place the cursor in the line of the declaration.
One word to the person who reported that bug: Please do not be offended that I blogged about it not being an actual bug but a feature. It is not meant to shame you. On the contrary, I am grateful that I receive good bug reports like this one. Please keep them coming!
If you’d like to discuss this blog post, you can do so in the corresponding post in the international DelphiPraxis forum.
COVID-19 is still going strong, even 2 years after it was first discovered. We’re on the Omicron variant now and nobody knows what new variants the near future may bring. I got my vaccination jabs in 2021-06-08 (AstraZeneca), 2021-07-17 (Biontech/Pfizer) and a booster 2021-12-09 (Moderna). As you can see, I survived all of them for at least a month 😉 Side effects were limited to some mild headache that lasted for about 24 hours.
On the bright side: I have been working from home basically through the whole pandemic and I like it (my wife does too). I even managed not to put on too much weight, but using an exercise bike for 30 to 45 minutes a day takes much more effort than simply cycling to work and back. And I miss flying to the south on vacation.
But I digress:
The new GExperts version still supports all Delphi versions back to Delphi 6 (with the notable exception of Delphi 8) and even the Delphi 11 version is no longer in Alpha state (but it’s still beta, there will be glitches!). Support for per monitor DPI awareness should now work (in Delphi 11, and definitely better than in the IDE itself).
There are even a few new features:
And of course a few bug fixes.
As always: Report and any bugs you find (or contribute bug fixes) and also file feature requests or maybe even contribute implementations for these features.
Head over to the GExperts download page to get it.
Discussion about this post in the international Delphi Praxis forum.
I have just finished making the stand alone GExperts Grep to really be stand alone, that is: It no longer needs the GExperts DLL but contains all the functionality in one executable. It has also been compiled with Delphi 11 Alexandria so it should be per monitor DPI aware.
Another feature is the ability to integrate itself into the Windows Explorer popup menu. Simply open the Options on the Grep Search dialog.
And set the appropriate check marks.
The first one adds an entry to the context menu of the tree view on the Windows Explorer’s left hand side tree view …
… and to the context menu of the background of the right hand side panel.
The second one adds an entry to the context menu of folder entries of the right hand side panel.
You can download it here.
This release is part of the preparation for the GExperts 1.3.20 release which I plan to do within a few weeks. It will still be a Beta for Delphi 11 (but hey: No longer Alpha) but a regular release for all other Delphi versions.
If you find any bugs, please report them!
Discussion about this post in the international Delphi Praxis forum.
Another episode from the series “GExperts features that I didn’t know about”:
It’s possible to drag an entry from the GExperts Grep to any other Windows program, e.g. to the Explorer, which will copy that file to the directory it was dragged to, or to an editor which will open that file.
I just now found out about this because I wondered why it was using Anders Melander’s DropSource unit (version 3.6 from 1999, maybe I should have a look if an update is possible).
Btw: I’m about to make the stand alone Grep tool a real stand alone executable that does not require the GExperts DLL (and its package dependencies). The reason is that I can’t find the cause for an Access Violation that happens in the Delphi 10.4 and 11 DLLs when opening the Grep window from an external program. It’s somewhere in the OnCreate event handler of TDockableForm, for which the source code is not available, so it’s difficult to debug.
Some of the experts in GExperts have seen small improvements lately:
The Goto expert now allows incremental search in the list by typing in the number field. This feature was contributed by Achim Kalwa.
The Grep search expert now takes the name of the currently selected control on the form designer if it is opened while the form designer is active. Again, this feature was contributed by Achim Kalwa. The idea was from Peter Panettone.
The Todo expert now has a filtering function. The idea was from Peter Panettone, who also provided an implementation. Unfortunately I had to reimplement it because his code did not work with older Delphi versions.
Thanks again to everybody who contributes to the project. I might take a while to commit such changes but I try to do my best.
Just a quick info on the state of GExperts for Delphi 11:
I went through all the dialogs and now the toolbars and also the icons in the menus should be scaled properly. They don’t really look nice because they are simply enlarged using the method Žarko Gajić described, but I don’t really want to spend time on redesigning them all.
Embarcadero has released a second patch (called November Patch) for Delphi 11 which seems to fix several issues that blocked further progress on GExperts for Delphi 11. So here it is, fresh out of the compiler: The second Alpha version of GExperts for Delphi 11.
Please keep in mind: This is not even a Beta version! There will be bugs and these will not only be UI glitches but functionality failures!
You have been warned!
You will most likely need the Delphi 11 November patch for GExperts 1.3.19 Alpha 2 to work. I have not tried it with the unpatched IDE and I won’t support it.
If you still want to try it, you can download it here.
Please report any bugs on SourceForge!
There are no updates for older Delphi versions yet, but you can always get the sources and compile your own DLL.
Also, if you want to try and fix some bugs in the Delphi 11 version yourself, see the link above. I’ll gladly accept patches.
After wasting days and more days of my valuable spare time on trying to get the high DPI display problems sorted out for GExperts for Delphi 11, I give up now.
I’ll wait for Delphi 11.1 or at least some additional patches before I spend any more time on this.
If somebody else wants to give it a try, feel free to do that. You know where the source code is.