Tag - i18n - Synopse Open Source

2013-03-07

64 bit compatibility of mORMot units

By AB4327-GANDI, 2013-03-07. Open Source › mORMot Framework

I'm happy to announce that mORMot units are now compiling and working great in 64 bit mode, under Windows.
Need a Delphi XE2/XE3 compiler, of course!

ORM and services are now available in Win64, on both client and server sides.
Low-level x64 assembler stubs have been created, tested and optimized.
UI part is also available... that is grid display, reporting (with pdf export and display anti-aliasing), ribbon auto-generation, SynTaskDialog, i18n... the main SynFile demo just works great!

Overall impression is very positive, and speed is comparable to 32 bit version (only 10-15% slower).

Speed decrease seems to be mostly due to doubled pointer size, and some less optimized part of the official Delphi RTL.
But since mORMot core uses its own set of functions (e.g. for JSON serialization, RTTI support or interface calls or stubbing), we were able to release the whole 64 bit power of your hardware.

Delphi 64 bit compiler sounds stable and efficient. Even when working at low level, with assembler stubs.
Generated code sounds more optimized than the one emitted by FreePascalCompiler - and RTL is very close to 32 bit mode.
Overall, VCL conversion worked as easily than a simple re-build.
Embarcadero's people did a great job for VCL Win64 support, here!

2012-07-10

Better Unicode support in Reports and PDF generation

By AB4327-GANDI, 2012-07-10. Open Source › Open Source libraries

By default, both GDI+ anti-aliased drawing and PDF file generation using our libraries did lack of font-fallback implementation.

If some of the characters in a string are not supported in a requested font, they were drawn as square symbols on the GDI+ canvas or the PDF content.

The font-fallback mechanism implemented will use a third-party font (Arial Unicode MS by default, which is installed with Microsoft Office), for any glyph that are missing when rendering the content. Of course, for PDF generation, you are able to embed the font within the generated file (this is by the way mandatory for PDF/A-1 format).

Both of these new features are handled by the SQlite3Pages unit, i.e. for report anti-aliased drawing preview and PDF generation.

By the way, the TGDIPages class itself (the one used for report generation from code) now handles by default Unicode text, even with Delphi versions prior to 2009 (via the SynUnicode string type, which maps WideString before Delphi 2009, then UnicodeString starting with Delphi 2009). Does make sense with such a font-fallback mechanism.

2012-05-25

Domain-Driven design

By AB4327-GANDI, 2012-05-25. Open Source › mORMot Framework

With a previous article, we introduced the concept of "Domain-Driven design" into our framework presentation.

It's now time to detail a bit more this very nice software architecture design, and how mORMot is able to achieve such an implementation pattern.

2012-04-25

The mORMot attitude

By AB4327-GANDI, 2012-04-25. Open Source › mORMot Framework

In a discussion with Henrick Hellström, in Embarcadero forums, I wrote some high-level information about mORMot.

It was clear to me that our little mORMot is now far away from a simple Client-Server solution.

The Henrick point was that with Real Thin Client (RTC), you are able to write any Client-Server solution, even a RESTful / JSON based one.

He is of course right, but it made clear to me all the work done in mORMot since its beginning.
From a Client-Server ORM, it is now a complete SOA framework, ready to serve Domain-Driven-Design solutions.

2011-09-14

L10n and i18n in our framework

By AB4327-GANDI, 2011-09-14. Open Source › mORMot Framework

In computing, internationalization and localization (also spelled internationalisation and localisation) are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market:

Internationalization (i18n) is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages;
Localization (L10n) is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text, e.g. for dates display.

Our framework handle both features, via the SQLite3i18n.pas unit. For instance, resourcestring defined in the source code are retrieved from the executable and can be translated on the fly. The unit extends this to visual forms, and even captions generated from RTTI.

In short, making your software open to any language is handled by the framework, from the bottom-up.