This is a log of the chat rooms during the live audio chat from November 24, 2004 on Delphi 2005 with Allen Bauer, a Borland Principal Engineer, and Delphi IDE architect. Allen discusses his work on Delphi 2005 in this chat.

Note: This log is only the chat room transcript. There is much additional information covered in the audio replay that is not available in this chat log. For all previous and upcoming live chats, see http://bdntv.borland.com/chat.html.

VIP Lounge

aohlsson: iman: "will this be just IDE or will VCL questions be ok?" - Feel free to test us... ;)

aohlsson: harharhar: "hey did my delphi licensing question arrive? Sorry to bother but I have a meeting in a few mins and would to know it" - Yes it did. We usually queue up the questions and answer as we go... ;)

jkaster: harharhar: "we are currently working on a development environment for SVG / C# and we wanted to use Delphi for that as for all of our projects. No I heard something about that the Delphi license prohibits the creation of such IDEs with Delphi ?" - I think we probably will have to forward that to our legal department. Send an email to legal (at) borland.com.

jkaster: Woof: "Is there any intention to progress the refactor tool to actually parse through an entire project and look for the same code and replace it with the new method? (ignoring the fact mine just errors under win32)" - we are planning on extending the refactoring support

jkaster: DocAl: "For pure Win32 developers, how much .NET is required for the IDE? I would really hate having to install all of .NET, while I am not currently doing anything with it." - in the strictest sense, the IDE really only requires the .NET runtime to be installed, not the SDK. A lot of the SDK is required for the HTML Help 2 engine. The .NET runtime is definitely required, mainly because we leverage the work we did for Delphi 8 and C#Builder.

jkaster: DonS: "Are the parser interfaces published, or are they really IOTACodeDOM?" - Since the CodeDOM interfaces are an MS spec interface, we have published those bits. This allows you a significant amount of work just at this interface level.

aohlsson: DocAl: "Do you have some benchmarks for the loading time of the IDE for the different SKUs? My D7 Enterprise loads in less than 10s, while I have heard 2 to 3 mins for D2005 (!!)..." - I just tested it right now. Delphi 7 Enterprise 20 seconds first load. 5 seconds 2nd and 3rd load. Delphi 2005 Architect 70 seconds 1st load, 20 seconds 2nd and 3rd load.

jkaster: Gordon: "will other version control systems will be supported in future versions and is there an open api for this support" - Yes, it is an open API. Other version control systems are being evaluated, such as CVS. The primary focus of this release was supporting our own product, StarTeam.

jkaster: davidi: "With the history files - can you check into StarTeam one of them or all of them" - we don't actually check in files from the history view. that's a viewing mechanism for the history. if you want to check in a file, you can do it from the project manager, or the embedded StarTeam client.

jkaster: Holger: "Read in non-technical about the History-window bug with the font? Will it be fixed in the next patch?" - I think I just read that today. Not sure whether that would appear in an initial patch. Please make sure the issue is reported in QualityCentral.

jkaster: drbob42: "is the unmanaged Open Tools API deprecated? Or less-preferred than the managed API?" - It is neither deprecated nor less-preferred. It's primarily a personal preference. There is currently a larger set of APIs available for the unmanaged interface right now. For things like the CodeDOM, you'll need the managed layer.

jkaster: Lloyd: "Does the CodeDOM understand the layout of a Pascal unit such as interface/implementation" - Yes, it does. It has to.

jkaster: jthurman: "As for CodeDom... what about getting the AST stuff on the win32 side?" - We've had a lot of requests for this, and it's something we're investigating. Please let us know the demand level for this by posting a request in QualityCentral and using votes on it.
jkaster inserts the following link: http://qc.borland.com

jkaster: DonS: "Can CodeDOM be used for Win32 code?" - answered already

jkaster: jthurman: "There are a lot of 3p developers who have tried to add toolbars to the IDE using the OTA, but have run into problems. Can something be published on how to do this (similar to the articles on docking IDE windows from several years ago)?" - I've read about some of those issues, and have plenty of internal examples. It's definitely possible, but I can't commit to a timeline.

jkaster: Holger: "Do you plan any further features for the Tool Palette (like vertical mode, better filters, categories)?" - we'll ask this in Corbin's chat.

jkaster: Leonel: "Do you plan to provide an interface to the refactoring engine so we can create our own refactorings?" - This is also something that deals with ASTs. It's probably best to get details from Corbin.

jkaster: Woof: "Will you consider adding options to load just the specific modules to work in win32/.net/c# so short cuts can be made to reduce the loading time to help people who are suffering from the long load issues?" - (laughs) That's a good question. That's an internal research item right now. There's some interesting "hacky" ways to do it today, but we're definitely investigating ways to make this possible.

jkaster: doychin: "WIll we see the annotaions support in Delphi?" - Please clarify. Are you talking about aspects, or what?

jkaster: nutcracke: "what is AST?" - One of those TLAs: (Three Letter Acronyms). AST=Abstract Syntax Tree

aohlsson: TomReier: "This is important! Did the Kitchen Sink make it into D2005?" - Corbin is the Plumber, so we'll defer this to him... ;)

jkaster: doychin: "you can see who changed each line of code in jb" - that feature didn't make it in this release due to time constraints. It's definitely on the list for the next release.

jkaster: iman: "Is the VCL considered legacy like the BDE?" - VCL is definitely not legacy

jkaster: iman: "Chances of Borland releasing Python/Perl/PHP IDE personality?" - A lot of these ideas are bantered around internally quite a bit. Nothing firm to state.

jkaster: mboler: "Has there been any work on Win32 DLLs about using TLS with demand loaded packages or DLLs?" - please clarify in another question

davidi: BDE great for dbase and Paradox.

jkaster: mboler: "Allen - Have you kept the foil off your windows? :)" - I don't have any foil on my windows!

jkaster: Lloyd: "Why does Delphi 2005 still have a lot of Kylix code lying around...is Kylix still alive?" - Kylix is still a product that we sell, and it's still out there. We certainly are keeping an eye on that market.
jkaster inserts the following link: http://crosskylix.untergrund.net/

jkaster: Shane: "Using Visual Studio 2003 it can create Installs (MSIs) automatically for your program (when doing an Outlook Add-in for example). Are there plans for Delphi to create MSI installs based on your projects requirements?" - This is something that could be implemented through the deployment manager. It would be a great question for Jim Tierney's chat.

jkaster: nutcracke: "Why are there so less enhancements done in the VCL in tha last years? I want to see Borland makes our daily programming faster by adding new powerfull classes and components in the VCL." - This should be asked during Seppy's talk, but we've definitely enhanced the VCL for this release.

jkaster: serge_d: "The deployment manager - how robust API will be?" - please ask this in Jim Tierney's chat

jkaster: serge_d: "Will components/controls present in C# make into VCL (HelpProvider, ToolTip, NotifyIcon, ErrorProvider, Crystall Printer)" - please ask in Seppy's chat

jkaster: Lloyd: "What happened to the OTA help in Delphi 2005?" - This would be a good question for Troy Klukewich

jkaster: nutcracke: "What about an unicode enabled VCL (Win32)? Still no plans?" - It's something we're still investigating. VCL for .NET is completely Unicode, but this doesn't solve problems for the Win32 side, and that effort would be rather herculean to support it.

jkaster: mboler: "Clarification: In past, Thread Local Storage didn't work in libraries loaded with Loadlibrary vs. static linked - wondering if that was fixed in D2.5K or if it can even be fixed at all - remembering something about Danny saying it was a Windows problem." - I suspected that was the topic of this question. We still think it might be Windows itself.

jkaster: davidi: "Can D2k5 import project from all versions of Delphi including 16 bit resource files from Delphi 1?" - Yes, but not necessarily all 16 bit resource files. The 16 bit DFM files are supported.

jkaster: Holger: "I've heard that the IDE would support WebBlogs. Any chance to include the RSS feeds itself into it (not just through a Web Browser). The Welcome Screen with all the links is a neat feature..." - The welcome page already supports RSS feeds that get rendered in the welcome page.

jkaster: roddy: "How easy will it be to fully incorporate a Win32/VCL C++ 'identity' within the D2005 IDE?" - It would actually be fairly easy to do. We demonstrated this feasibility at the C++ meet the team at BorCon US.

jkaster: serge_d: "Do you plan to release some of the features of IDE as a VCL component - docking, editor, etc..." - The tool palette should already be a component. Good question for Corbin or Seppy.

jkaster: Lloyd: "Will you ever replace the Image Editor, it's looking rather aged now and we had a descent editor in the old Workshop and integrated in C++5" - Can't really comment on this

jkaster: davidi: "How much work is it to add another language personality? Is there an example personality and documentation?" - Quite a bit of work, in a variety of places

jkaster: Woof: "Is there anyway to grovel yourself into beta tester status?" - It depends on what you bring into the field test. Participating and contributing on QualityCentral is a good way to get noticed.

jkaster: Shane: "Is there some easy place we could submit projects from Delphi 7 and such that do not convert to Win32 or .NET in 2005? I have a few but don't want to call support and open a new issue for each. There should be somewhere the public could submit such things online for review by you." - These problems should be submitted to QualityCentral. That's the best place to track it.

davidi: Resource Workshop was written by Peter Eden of EdenSoft. WhiteWater wrote the Whitewater Resource Toolkit which we used until we acquired RW.

jkaster: charlesm: "has borland ever considered writing their own VM platform to compete with java and .net? i would think it would be a wise long-term strategy to take, but would be quite an undertaking :)" - To be a third wheel on the market? I'm not sure about this idea. In my opinion it's very, very unlikely.

jkaster: doychin: "Did you guys ever went to look how is Delphi used by your customers instead of sending support or marketing people?" - One of the things I'm pushing for us to do at the next BorCon is to provide a usability lab. JBuilder has been doing this at BorCon for a couple years now, and it's a fantastic idea.

jkaster: youseful: "Shouldn't BTPS have access to and be responsible for handling officially undocumented changes version to version? IOW let us make the decision so we can serve each IDE version we can best. and take responsibility for the consequences?" - There is a lot of undocumented features simply because features are undocumented. Since they're not published, we also don't know what changes we might make between releases. This gives us flexibility to change/improve these interfaces in the future. Publishing it sets a standard interface for it. Providing undocumented feature support to BTPs could be quite a bit of work.

Public chat

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Holger: Borland Germany has nicer music
Caleb666: can you sing for us aohlsson ?:)
Caleb666: well, if you'll sing, I'll dance
Holger: yes, make him moderator :-)
jthurman: I play the organ and piano in church on sundays... Name that tune is just part of the gig. :)
thurman: Hrm... smashmouth on the organ. That would be fun.
Caleb666: i'd take 60s rock over that anyday :)
Holger: who in the chat already has d2005?
DocAl: Interesting to see that this was done using Kylix... :)
harharhar: me :)
jthurman: Holger: I do.
harharhar: Delphi 2005 rocks :)
Caleb666: im about to install
gman2: I have not downloaded it yet.
gman2: is it stable?
domus: I just got the latest GW-BASIC with my DOS 3.30 the other day
Lloyd: DOS 3? Upgrade, we have DOS 6
domus: Wow! Braggart!
Holger: hello abauer ;-)
jthurman: I would say it's mostly stable. It has some quirks, but everything does a week after release. I fully expect that when the first update hits, it will be truly great.
Lloyd: I broke the Code Collapsing the other day
harharhar: @jthurman.. aren't u the author of that Delphi Addin? Castalia or something like that?
jthurman: harharhar: Yup.
gman2: am I the only one who just got disconnected?
domus: There's a guy suffering on your music DVD. Put him out of his misery!
Caleb666: lol @ domus
DonS: he's already deazd
Caleb666: i think we're all suffering with him :)
harharhar: Vip team, any clue about my licensing question ?
Holger: ever listened to dot net rocks?
Holger: their music is horrible
jthurman: "Castalia: All the features that Borland rejected." :)
harharhar: but dot net really rocks *g*
gman3: I have that podcasting feed.
Caleb666: shameless plugs
Lloyd: Who selected the music?
doychin: I prefer U2 or Depeche ;-)
domus: When you do the transcript, can you please cut the public chat out? It will be too embarrassing to show the grandkids later one.
DocAl: Music over? Phew!
jthurman: Caleb666: I didn't start it this time, at least.
Caleb666: are you physically there, or just moderating?
doychin: hi everybody
Lloyd: thurman: Rahly should be here defending unicode :)
DonS: hi doychin
jthurman: Yeah, he should.
doychin: Hi Don
domus: Or Universal Time.
jthurman: But he stayed up a little tonight last night. He and I were playing with stuff until like 3.30am.
doychin: it is much crowded tonight. yesterday and the day before yesterday there was just a few chat users
Caleb666: IDE's much more popular :)
doychin: I would say that Delhi community checks BDN site more frquently ;-)
doychin: I can't say the same for Java guys
TomReier: Hmm. My MediaPlayer 10 is borked. Does anyone know how I can connect with MPlayer2.exe instead (the old one)?
doychin: run it and copy/paste the URL to Open URL dialog
Woof: Isnt there an open URL option in your old one?
jthurman: "Some other tools that supply refactoring..." :)
Lloyd: shameless plug
Caleb666: lol, yes again :D
Lloyd: shameful
domus: SHeesh. I thought I got mail, but it's them there guys.
TomReier: Yep, there is, but it isn't working. I guess the URL isn't in the format it wants it or it doesn't support the mms: protocol...
Lloyd: Firewall/NAT issues?
TomReier: Nope, worked last week. Oh well, I'll find my portable...
Caleb666: i love the backups idea ;)
jthurman: Poor man's VCS.
domus: I don't believe in backing up. It makes life less exciting.
Woof: aye, if you screwed your files that bad that you cant recover them, more fool you :)
doychin: it is very useful when you have to bring back some code ;-)
Lloyd: Think of the disk space!
drbob42: History is cool - especially in combination with the StarTeam client
doychin: yep ;-)
Lloyd: hey drbob
drbob42: Hi Lloyd
iman: 100 gig drives are available cheap
jthurman: drbob: Yeah, combined with a proper version control system, it would be very useful.
doychin: and when we get CVS integration the way it works with StarTeam this will be great ;-)
drbob42: That's what I said - StarTeam ;-)
Woof: hehe - Im so regretting having the dumb name of woof :P
drbob42: you can always logout and login again ;-)
domus: It's there for all eternity to witness
Woof: I tried that it would only accept my bdn login.. so I got stuck as Woof
Woof: <-- Liz really
drbob42: Hi Liz ;-)
domus: (this selective restoring of old code opens a whole plethora of new side-effect adventures. Love it. :)
gman3: hi liz
domus: Not Liz A.?
Woof: Nope not me
Caleb666: oh noes! D7 doesn't want to uninstall :P
domus: Told you to stick to GW-BASIC
drbob42: why would you want to uninstall it in the first place?
drbob42: It will work fine in combination with Delphi 2005...
Caleb666: replacing it with d2005 :)
Woof: Im still holding squarely onto my D5 pro
drbob42: But Delphi 7 still has CLX support, and ActiveForm Wizards, so I still use it (from time to time)
Woof: I love my d2k5 trial, Im just disapointed it hates me so much with my app, I hope in the next like 25 days or so it grows to love me a bit more
MaxOdenda: trial works very fast for me, except the help and pressing F1? Any tips how to improve speed
drbob42: more memory usually helps ;-)
Woof: Defrag?
youseful: thank god bauer is good
jthurman: INTA interfaces, for one.
Lloyd: I only wished the Win32 side had IOTACodeDom*
jthurman: Lloyd: I second that.
youseful: The day a third party can install their own personality into the IDE and looks like it came out of the box, will be the day the IDE will truly be mature
Woof: My hubby thought I was a nut case he couldnt work out what I was listening to
Lloyd: What if you're deaf?
Woof: a transcript gets placed I think later
Caleb666: this answers that question: http://blogs.borland.com/stevet/archive/2004/11/22/1902.aspx
Woof: moment I mentioned delphi he rolled his eyes and ran away
Lloyd: Caleb: you stole my IRC post! :)
Lloyd: Woof: heh, with me and my gf it's the other way
doychin: any idea what is the actually delay for the sound? I think it is something about 40 seconds
youseful: if the audio no go i would just leave as it is the only reason be here
jthurman: doychin: That's going to be different for each person based on connection speed, distance, etc...
youseful: hi mark boler
Woof: Mine doesn't seem a huge delay, I'm seeing the question typed response around the same time the main conclusion is given
mboler: Hello all
doychin: I don't think speed and distance matter in this case because audio stream is UDP so in my case i think not more then 400-500 ms to receive the packet but it more depends on the size of the buffer at the server
RobLove: and the buffer in your client.
Woof: Out of curiousity do people like john kaster (whos posted one of the question/answers up there) read the public chat at all?
mboler: My audio stream is very good through a proxy/tunnel
drbob42: yes, I think they do read it - they sometimes respond to comments being made here...
Woof: ok, :) was curious, as Im keen to find out how long a waiting list there is for beta testers :P
youseful: those code dom docs are incomplete and unclear
mboler: youseful: does the chat engine show my full name?
youseful: no merely mboler
Holger: cvs would be cool
mboler: I like Starteam - but it's really still expensive
Holger: Professional does not include a license... :-(
youseful: yes it is nice but expensive it is light years ahead of that foolish call sourcesafe
Woof: Id use zip files of each version before using source safe :(
mboler: I can use D2500 now for C#
mboler: and mix DforDnet and C#
mboler: In fact, I need to find a good GUI guy near Dallas that can do both Delphi for dot net and C# custom controls
drbob42: I'm less than a lightyear from Dallas...
youseful: drbob42 : lol
mboler: Hi Dr.Bob - yes. I was near you last February, Went to Amsterdam
Woof: Where abouts are you DrBob?
drbob42: that's close - I'm in Helmond (about 100 miles South)
youseful: Amsterdam? are the stories true?? lol
drbob42: yes - and then some - that's why I live in Helmond now ;-)
Lloyd: DonS: Have you seen the CodeDOM post on Corbin Dunn's blog btw?
bmcgee: Publish some of the hacks
DonS: @Lloyd no... thx, i'll look for it.
youseful: Attributes in win32 ?? maybe?
Lloyd: DonS: http://blogs.borland.com/corbindunn/archive/2004/09/30/1493.aspx
youseful: BDE not legacy???!! grrr
RobLove: only sql links.
RobLove: I know of many shops still using Local stuff (paradox) with BDE.
mboler: They didn't work in earlier Delphi versions
iman: I still use BDE with Paradox
Lloyd: The company I used to work for has only just moved from BDE to SQL 2000
Woof: send that man to a doctor, no one codes with the blinds open :P
mboler: YES! Please don't kill Kylix-
jthurman: My blinds are open... watching the snow.
Woof: Its a shame Kylix wasnt part of d2005
Holger: where can you see kylix remains?
Woof: You arent coding now though you're looking at this :)
iman: CrossKylix has me looking at Kylix again.
Holger: Deployment Manager sadly only in Enterprise and Architect :-(
drbob42: Woof/Liz: Ah, that must be why I don't have those in the attic
Woof: ah. My blind spends its life down over 99% of the time, in fact I only open it to let wasps out of
serge_d: I am looking into possibility of integration of InstallAware with Delphi, let me know if anytbody has interest in particular features... (serge@dragonsoftru.com)
Woof: I usually use wise as my install package macker
youseful: hey!!!
mboler: hay?
youseful: this klinjs do NOT open in a different window??
RobLove: ftp/copy is more common for ASP.NET
youseful: the links
youseful: lol
Holger: nutcracke: we got the JCL and JVCL ...
Woof: aye, JCL/JVCL rocks but doesnt like d2k5 atm it seems
Holger: JCL and JVCL works with d2k5
Shane: Anyone have example code for .NET using Sockets and persistent connections?
DonS: do you mean persistent HTTP connections?
RobLove: There is an XML file you can edit to add your own feeds.
DonS: @RobLove... any plans to publish your mods to .Text?
RobLove: yep ;-)
Shane: Not http. TCP. I want to connect to a server, send it a message and stay connected. Then the server goes around and sends messages to clients based on what it recieves. My project seems to hang because I find the BeginReceive BeginAccept, etc confusing
drbob42: Holger: see BDS/3.0/WelcomePage/xml/defaultProviders.xml
drbob42: and add http://www.drbob42.com/rss.xml ;-)
RobLove: Yes it might happen.
zzorro: Is it possible to redirect the IDE's web browser to other URLs?
Lloyd: TCategoryButtons, TGroupButton and TDockTabSet i think
serge_d: Docking is not published as it should, there is almost no documentation and functionality is still limited...
mboler: Wasn't that older image editor done by Dr Bob?
RobLove: Community Server version might be more likely as it abstracts authentication.
mboler: the one in the old Resource Workshop?
drbob42: nop - someone else with a hat ;-)
mboler: I saw the hat in the about box easter egg and all this time I assumed it was you -
drbob42: sorry - not related ;-)
mboler: wow-
mboler: serious?
DonS: @RobLove... great. Look forward to it (eventually).
Holger: BorCon was a nice way with the preview...
Lloyd: Resource Workshop was fine in its day
mboler: DrBob: That's interesting - so there are two "hats"
drbob42: Jeff D. also had a hat - he was my role model ;-)
drbob42: David gave the answer - thanks DavidI!
mboler: It was on the D5 CD as an extra
nutcracke: What if I don't have that CD anymore?
Woof: Id certainly put my vote that any VM platform borland made would almost certainly be better than .net
mboler: Is it on the table for Borland to write a VM or platform?
Finn: did he discuss wether to support Mono in the future? sorry I came in late here....
charlesm: finn: someone asked danny thorpe about that
charlesm: finn: its in the audio chat with danny
Holger: thanx for the great show guys...
Finn: charlesm: ok, thanks
Holger: keep it up frequently
youseful: ok
youseful: int files be nice
youseful: thanks
mboler: Thanks everyone!
Woof: aww /wave thanks for a great discussion
charlesm: THANK YOU!
serge_d: Thank you!!! looking forward for replay... ;o)
jthurman: Thanks Allen, John, Anders! Always a pleasure...
bmcgee: Thanks guys
drbob42: Thanks Allen, David, John and Anders!! These sessions are great.
RobLove: Thanks!
Woof: not drivel
doychin: thanks for the great chat
DonS: thx all
youseful: thanks!!!!!!!
leopasta: thanks guys!
youseful: for answering me
DocAl: cheers
mboler: later everyone
doychin: buy and I'll be waiting for the following chats ;-)
CraigM: Thanks all.
nutcracke: thanks. It was a good chat. Bye all.
Lloyd: man i think i let the veg over boil
jthurman: Bye everyone.
Lloyd: back to irc!
Finn: how can I get notified of events as this ?
Finn: is there a mailinglist ?
bmcgee: Check EventCentral for the schedule (http://calendar.borland.com)
Finn: thanks bmcgee