VCL for Delphi 2005 with Seppy Bloom and Danny Thorpe

Listen to the audio replay.

This is a log of the chat room during the live audio chat from December 17, 2004 on Delphi 2005 with Seppy Bloom and Danny Thorpe. They discuss the VCL and VCL for Microsoft.NET in Delphi 2005.

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.

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aohlsson: Feel free to ask any VCL Win32 and .NET questions using /ask or the ask button.
aohlsson inserts the following link: http://qc.borland.com
dthorpe inserts the following link: http://homepages.borland.com/dthorpe/sbloom.JPG

jkaster: Ronald: "There are 3 VCL's, Win32, .Net and Kylix. I think it is the natural tendancy of a libray to grow closer to the underlying platform. And for crossplatform work you want to keep as much as possible the same. How are you handeling this dillemma?" - Seppy: For linux and Windows, we focused on name compatibility. For VCL and VCL.NET, we have the same underlying API, so it's a matter of handling message passing more, but the underlying code is very similar. The underlying implementation for CLX is radically different.

jkaster: Ronald: "I know it is probably to soon to ask this, but how will generics influence the VCL, especially the container classes, a new set of container classes?" - Seppy: I think we'll look at the compiler support for generics on both .NET and Win32. We want to maintain compatibility between the two. We're not going to change it just to change it.

jkaster inserts the following link: http://bdn.borland.com/article/0,1410,31886,00.html

jkaster: Using standard .NET controls in VCL .NET applications with Delphi 8

jkaster: Ronald: "I missed the unit-test talk, but this question also fits here. Is the VCL 'supported' with unit-tests?" - First, watch for the unit-testing replay. You should be able to unit test anything in VCL with our new unit testing support.

Editor's note: Unit testing is supported for VCL. The unit testing replay is available at http://bdn.borland.com/article/0,1410,32920,00.html

jkaster: you're welcome, holger. There's probably some improvements on that in D2005
jkaster: holger: "Seppy, could you comment if you plan to include the VirtualTreeview into the VCL (esp. for .NET!), as it is already used by the IDE?" - Seppy: I haven't heard anything but we have given code changes back for it.

aohlsson inserts the following link: http://www.lischke-online.de/VirtualTreeview/VT.php

jkaster: livechat: "Serialization of VCL classes. Do you have plans to make VCL classes such as TList serializable? Marking them with [Serializable] attribute, so that they can be used with such mechanisms as .NET Remoting. (QC 8096)" - Danny: For .net remoting to fully marshal that class, it has to be a descendant of MarshalByRef, which adds a lot of "weight" to the class, so I'm a bit leery of making TList serializable for .NET 1.1. There are architectural changes for .NET 2.0 that might make this more feasibile.

jkaster: holger: "I am having huge problems including pure .NET components into VCL.NET applications. Documentation is really limited. Could you perhaps write some short BDN article, like somebody from Borland (I hope it was him) did for Client Datasets?" - Seppy: We can look at putting some kind of article together. Specifics would be appreciated.

jkaster: nickh: "Since the Avalon is really a glorified version of what VCL has been doing for ten years, what are the prospects for migrating the VCL to the Longhorn/Avalon platform?" - seppy: that's definitely a research item at this point. Danny: which means I would like very much to see it and I've assigned the task to Seppy to find out.

jkaster: blx: "just a comment: congratulations for the decision to include a cpersonality in future Delphi-versions!" - thank you. it actually wasn't any new decision on the part of the team, but congratulations to our executive team for deciding to push forward on it.
jkaster: davidi: and thank you, Co j m+ community, for your valuable feedback on this request

jkaster: jkaster: "Did the new enumerator syntax capability in Delphi 2005 drive any VCL changes?" - Seppy: The pattern the compiler is looking for is the IEnumerable interface or GetEnumerator method. And we added that to several of the "list" controls. Danny: We didn't go whole hog on this because we know generics are going to be coming, and we want to use the best method for implementing this new technology for both .NET and Win32

jkaster: GuestMe: "how long's Borland VCL going to stay?" - Danny: As long as we can keep it going, as long as customers are asking for it, as long as customers are using it.

jkaster: livechat: "In your opinion is the future of VCL still bright? Are there any talks of phasing out the VCL in favor to more pure .NET with Winforns, or whatever comes after Winforms? Do you feel good about VCL future?" - just answered

jkaster: nickh: "What is a good answer when a customer asks "Why should I use VCL.NET?"" - danny: the strength of VCL for .NET is continuity across platforms.
jkaster inserts the following link: http://bdn.borland.com/article/0,1410,31983,00.html
jkaster: Why VCL for .NET? - by Danny Thorpe

jkaster: blx: "Could borland encourage third-party vendors to port their VCLWin32-components to VCL.NET components? The lack of VCL.NET thirdparty components is a real showstopper for single-source Win32/.NET-applications" - david: we did briefings for all component vendors way back before this product was released. They were given access to Delphi 2005 very early on. Some of it is just a matter of time. There are many already available. We'll continue to encourage everyone. You should also go to all your Win32 VCL component vendors and let them know you want VCL.NET versions of them. Borland needs to continue putting out quality .NET support so people will use our product on .NET, and that will show the BTPs the market exists.

jkaster: nickh: "Many folks are saying that Win32 and VCL/Win32 is getting the short shrift. Would you guys all say how hard you are working on the Win32 side of things?" - seppy: I think this release shows we added the same things in Win32 that we did in .NET. We are maintaining parity. For .NET, that was adding things already in Win32 for this release. danny: We also did new features for Win32 in the compiler, at significant personal effort.

jkaster: blx: "to danny: any news regarding support for custom attributes in a future version of the Win32-compiler?" - Danny: the custom attribute syntax for Win32, yes for the syntax. The runtime retrieval of the attributes is the challenge.

jkaster: GuestMe: "I'm planning on the buy of D2005 and some of my applications are threaded. Is there any change on *my* side working with threads with D2005 for dotNET? I ask this to understand if it's feasible to keep one only codebase until a switch is made necessary" - seppy: I'm not aware of any issues. We did do some tinkering with the TThread class on the .NET side so it's not identical to Win32. There's also TWin32Thread. danny: we did make some language RTL changes to improve that. Threading on the .NET side is much, much better than in the Win32 api.

aohlsson: COM is like smoking. Quit. If you never started, don't. (Alain "Lino" Tadros)
jkaster: holger: "David, one example for the things I cannot get to work in a VCL.NET app are the MySQL database connection components. Because it's not visual, the Wizard that converts components cannot find anything in the assemblies. For that more documentation would be needed. May be Seppy could comment if one has to write a wrapper for stuff like that." - Seppy: I wasn't involved personally on the wrapper side. It's definitely something we can look at documenting.

jkaster: holger: "If this is off-topic, just ignore it. But as Danny is there: Do you have a time set for the first D2005 patch that gets rid of the known annoyances. Maybe as a xmas present? ;-)" - Danny: The team is working on bug fixes. What we keep getting snagged on is getting versioning just right on the install. We hope to have a public beta very soon.

jkaster: blx: "did you already start working on the next delphi version, or are you currently in the planning phase?" - seppy: yes, we're definitely in the planning phase. Now is a good time to give us suggestions. danny: you should focus on "things that only Borland can do" for those suggestions. Like things to streamline the development process, the compiler, code insight ideas, etc.

jkaster: abauer: "the public beta is only for the D8 patch" - thanks for the reminder
jkaster: abauer: "The D'05 patch is going to be a fully qualified patch" - thanks Allen

jkaster: blx: "assuming that there could be a Win64-Delphi-compiler one day, how much effort to you see to bring the VCL32 to Win64?" - Danny: our primary push is to support .NET 64 bit support because that's most efficient

jkaster: blx: "regarding custom attributes and other features: sometimes it wouldn't be necessary to integrate it into the whole toolchain, I would be happy if only the compiler would support it!" - danny: that's very nice, but the compiler is only one very small piece of the product. The feature "doesn't exist" if the whole IDE doesn't support it.

jkaster: Serge_d: "Do you plan to sync component sets between D2005 VCL and WinForms, for example ErrorProvider (details are here http://www.dragonsoftru.com?go=d7d8)" - seppy: we can certainly investigate this.

jkaster: JoeH: "I heard that there was little documentation for a 3rd party db vendor to produce a BDP driver ? If that is true, could that be improved, so we can port use our legacy 3rd party db Delphi apps to ECO2 ?" - john: we'll be providing this soon. Watch BDN for an announcement and article.

davidi: holger: "David, regarding 3rd Party components: If vendors just develop for VCL.NET it's just Delphi. If vendors develop for WinForms it's for all languages, thus bigger market opportunities..." - David: Yes I understand this as an opportunity for 3rd party vendors. The Delphi VCL.NET is also a large business opportunity.

dthorpe: blx: "things only borland could do: the compiler and the debugger. Extensions such as Generics and attributes for Win32, opening up interfaces that allow us to add custom personalities .." - Danny: Yup.

dthorpe: blx: "when talking about Win64, we should assume that we are talking about AMD64 and Intels compatible, Itanium is dead (from a massmarket point of view)" - Danny: There's more than just AMD64 and Itanium. There's also XSCALE, ARM, and other more embedded processors

jkaster: nickh: "Any plans to add the ability to do Datasnap servers in VCL.NET?" - John: Come to next Monday's chat for the answer!

jkaster: Tjipke: "why are the non visual components when dropped on a form so bad ('resized')" - please clarify this

davidi: Tjipke: "icons have changed between D7 and D2005 -> made smaller, but resized on form again: look very bad" - Please put an entry in Quality Central for this. Thanks.

dthorpe: thank you!
dthorpe: hi bruce

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Woof: :( Im gonna miss most of this :(
Woof: Thanks :) I have to go down the chippy to get my tea!
Woof: Guys - you should really look to adding regular expressions to into a vcl component or 3.. that would rock.. rather than Tregexpr :) (not that its a bad component)
GuestMe: TRegExpr doesn't meet your needs?
Woof: It does, but occasionally its odd on me
GuestMe: Liz, regular expressions are tough
Woof: Im a unix fan, I grew up on them
GuestMe: you don't only need to do a correct one, but a good one
Woof: yup
Woof: I love it when you missout like one little bit and instead of nice ness you have a big pile of goo. and no idea what happened :)
GuestMe: cheers guy/girls, especially girls... and thank you Delphi R&D for so many years of coding happiness :-)
Woof: see ya
Tjipke: thx
holger: thank you guys
JoeH: Thanks !
bmcgee: Thanks guys