Converting an existing form from a plain TMainMenu to a TMainMenu plus a TActionList is one of those jobs that is not difficult, just tedious: For every menu item you create an action, copy the caption and the shortcut over, move the OnClick handler to the action's OnExecute, and then assign the action back to … Continue reading GExperts: New Expert “Menu Items to Actions” →

GExperts stores its settings in the Windows registry, under a key that is specific to each installed Delphi version. Copying that configuration to another machine, or from one Delphi version to another, used to mean exporting registry keys by hand and editing them so they pointed at the right version and then importing them into … Continue reading GExperts: Export and Import Your Complete Configuration →

Recent versions of Delphi (starting with Delphi 10.3 Rio) have a "Tabs" entry in the main menu that lists the files currently open in the editor and lets you jump to any of them. It replaced the older "Window" menu that earlier versions had. If you work in one of those earlier versions, you don't … Continue reading New GExperts Expert: A Tabs Menu for Delphi 6 to 10.2 →

At the Pascal Conference 2025 in Sundern Heiko Rompel (kralle) made a presentation about a plugin (or was it a patch?) for Lazarus that automatically switched between two desktop layouts whenever you toggled between the form designer and the code editor with F12. The reasoning was simple: some windows, such as the Object Inspector, are … Continue reading New in GExperts 1.3.26: Auto Switch Desktop →

Embarcadero has broken owner drawing of TStringGrid several times. To get the text positioned correctly you need version-specific X and Y offsets. Here is the case statement GExperts uses (from GX_StringGridDrawFix.pas): [delphi] procedure DetermineTextOffsets(_Focused: Boolean; out _XOffset, _YOffset: Integer); begin case GetBorlandIdeVersion of ideD600..ideRSXE1U1: begin // Versions before XE2 worked fine with an offset of … Continue reading Delphi VCL: Owner drawing a TStringGrid →

Apparently all subdomain redirections on my homepage are currently failing, one of them being https://gexperts.dummzeuch.de I have no idea what happened but I am looking into the issue. In the meantime you can just use https://blog.dummzeuch.de/experimental-gexperts-version/ instead, which is the target of the redirection.

GExperts version 1.3.28 has been released, bringing a new Vertical Tabs panel for the editor window, a syntax-highlighted context preview in Grep, and a number of smaller features and bug fixes. Head over to the GExperts download page to get it. New Features Vertical Tabs: a new dockable panel showing open editor files as a … Continue reading GExperts 1.3.28 released →

The Comment Code editor expert in GExperts lets you comment out a selected block of code with a single keyboard shortcut. You can configure which comment style to use per file extension: //, { }, (* *), /* */, or -- (SQL). There is a problem with some comment styles though: For all but // … Continue reading GExperts: Improvement to the Comment Code / Uncomment Code experts →