Synopse Open Source

2011-09-25

Some thoughts about OSX integration in XE2

By AB4327-GANDI, 2011-09-25. Pascal Programming

You know all that one of the most exciting features of Delphi XE2 is the MaxOSX Cross-Platform feature.
You've got the UI part, that is FireMonkey, but underneath, you did have some RTL modifications in order to let our Windows-centric solutions be OSX ready.

The first main step was to make our code speak with the "Objective-C" way of coding.

Objective-C is the primary language used for Apple's Cocoa API, and it was originally the main language on NeXT's NeXTSTEP OS. It's some object-oriented C variant, but something other than C++ or Java. In fact, Objective-C sounds more like a SmallTalk variance of C than another C++/Java/C# flavor. For instance, the Objective-C model of object-oriented programming is based on message passing to object instances: this is just another way of doing it. It has some advantages, and disadvantages (I don't want to troll here) - but it is definitively nice. And the memory model is just something else, more close to our reference-counting way (as in Delphi interface implementation) than a garbage collector.

Synopse SQLite3 framework is now mORMot

By AB4327-GANDI, 2011-09-25. Open Source › mORMot Framework

In case you were redirected from the previous "Synopse SQLite3 framework" category link, here is the new thread to be used instead: http://blog.synopse.info/category/Open-Source-Projects/mORMot-Framework Since revision 1.15 of the framework, it is able to connect to any database engine […]

Synopse PDF Engine 1.15

By AB4327-GANDI, 2011-09-25. Open Source › Synopse PDF engine

For our PDF generation Open-Source library, this is a small fix update.

It can now be compiled under Delphi XE2.
But it's still working from all previous IDE versions, starting with Delphi 5, and still 100% free - released under GPL/LGPL/MPL license, choice is yours.

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.

2011-09-12

Using Extended in Delphi XE2 64 bit

By AB4327-GANDI, 2011-09-12. Pascal Programming

Unfortunately, Delphi's 64-bit compiler (dcc64) and RTL do not support 80-bit extended floating point values on Win64, but silently alias Extended = Double on Win64.

There are situations, however, where this is clearly undesirable, e.g. if the additional precision gained from Extended is required.

The Open-source uTExtendedX87 unit provides a replacement FPU-backed 80-bit Extended floating point type (TExtendedX87) for Win64.

2011-09-01

DataSnap-like Client-Server JSON RESTful Services in Delphi 6-XE5

By AB4327-GANDI, 2011-09-01. Open Source › mORMot Framework

Article update:
The server side call back signature changed since this article was first published in 2010.
Please refer to the documentation or this forum article and associated commit.
The article was totally rewritten to reflect the enhancements.
And do not forget to see mORMot's interface-based services!

Note that the main difference with previous implementation is the signature of the service implementation event, which should be now exactly:
procedure MyService(Ctxt: TSQLRestServerURIContext);
(note that there is one unique class parameter, with no var specifier)
Please update your code if you are using method-based services!

You certainly knows about the new DataSnap Client-Server features, based on JSON, introduced in Delphi 2010.
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudi … plications

We added such communication in our mORmot Framework, in a KISS (i.e. simple) way: no expert, no new unit or new class. Just add a published method Server-side, then use easy functions about JSON or URL-parameters to get the request encoded and decoded as expected, on Client-side.

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2011-08-28

Multi-threading and Delphi

By AB4327-GANDI, 2011-08-28. Pascal Programming

Writing working multi-threaded code is not easy - it's even hard, as as a Delphi expert just wrote in his blog.

In fact, the first step into multi-thread application development could be:

"protect your shared variables with locks (aka critical sections), because you are not sure that the data you read/write is the same for all threads".

The CPU per-core cache is just one of the possible issues, which will lead into reading wrong values. Another issue which may lead into race condition is two threads writing to a resource at the same time: it's impossible to know which value will be stored afterward.

2011-08-20

Enhanced Log viewer

By AB4327-GANDI, 2011-08-20. Open Source › Open Source libraries

We already shipped a sophisticated set of logging classes some month ago.

Since then, its features have been enhanced, and the system has been deeply interfaced with our main ORM framework. Now almost all low-level or high-level operations can be logged on request.

But since the log files tend to be huge (for instance, if you set the logging for our unitary tests, the 6,000,000 unitary tests creates a 280 MB log file), a log viewer was definitively in need.