I have been using Delphi 7 for years, but would like to consider 2009, but have third party issues.  Perhaps someone has some suggestions for the following:
1.  I make heavy use of the GTSizer component to make the forms adjust to whatever screen resolution is being used and to keep all the components and label and grid text proportional for any screen  resolution.  GTSizer will not support 2009.  Does anyone know of another component or method to keeps components proportional?  Sure would be nice of Delphi would provide a built in option for this.
2.  I have been using the TextControl library for MSWord docs.  I would like to change and am not sure they are supporting 2009;
3.  I have a couple hundred systems in the field using FoxPro databases, so must stay with that.  I use CodeBase with CodeBase Components IV.  CodeBase Components IV does not plan to support 2009 and didn't even support 2008.  Can someone recomment a way out of this problem?

Thank you very much,
Jim Sawyer, DataWare

Jim Sawyer wrote:

> 1.  I make heavy use of the GTSizer component to make the forms
> adjust to whatever screen resolution is being used and to keep all the
> components and label and grid text proportional for any screen  
> resolution.  GTSizer will not support 2009.  Does anyone know of
> another component or method to keeps components proportional?  Sure
> would be nice of Delphi would provide a built in option for this.  

I read good things about TElasticForm once. It contains source, AFAIK.

-- 
Rudy Velthuis (TeamB)        http://www.teamb.com

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
 -- Bill Gates (1955-), in 1981

> 3.  I have a couple hundred systems in the field using FoxPro databases

Advantage database systems (TDataset descendant) is the only foxpro 
compatible system i know that supports 2009. I have no idea if its 
compatible with codebase.

http://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/advantagedatabaseserver/tdataset-descendant

Rudy Velthuis (TeamB) wrote:

> Jim Sawyer wrote:
> 
> > 1.  I make heavy use of the GTSizer component to make the forms
> > adjust to whatever screen resolution is being used and to keep all
> > the components and label and grid text proportional for any screen  
> > resolution.  GTSizer will not support 2009.  Does anyone know of
> > another component or method to keeps components proportional?  Sure
> > would be nice of Delphi would provide a built in option for this.  
> 
> I read good things about TElasticForm once. It contains source, AFAIK.

FWIW:

http://delphi.about.com/od/standards/a/aa030700a_2.htm

-- 
Rudy Velthuis (TeamB)        http://www.teamb.com

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours."
 -- Richard Bach

Rudy,

| I read good things about TElasticForm once. It contains source, AFAIK.

It was for Delphi 3 and, as far as I know, hasn't been updated since.

-- 

   Q

04/05/2009 15:59:47

XanaNews Version 1.18.1.52  [Everyone's & Q's Mods]

Quentin Correll wrote:

> Rudy,
> 
> >  I read good things about TElasticForm once. It contains source,
> > AFAIK.
> 
> It was for Delphi 3 and, as far as I know, hasn't been updated since.

But if it comes with source, that shouldn't matter much.

-- 
Rudy Velthuis (TeamB)        http://www.teamb.com

"You don't elect politicians to commit crimes; you elect 
 politicians to make your crimes legal." -- Matt Taibbi

Rudy,

| But if it comes with source, that shouldn't matter much.

It does if one doesn't want to mess-about with updating someone else's
old code. <g>

-- 

   Q

04/05/2009 19:28:24

XanaNews Version 1.18.1.52  [Everyone's & Q's Mods]

"Jim Sawyer" wrote in message news:101719@forums.codegear.com...
>I have been using Delphi 7 for years, but would like to consider 2009, but 
>have third party issues.  Perhaps someone has some suggestions for the 
>following:
> 1.  I make heavy use of the GTSizer component to make the forms adjust to 
> whatever screen resolution is being used and to keep all the components 
> and label and grid text proportional for any screen  resolution.  GTSizer 
> will not support 2009.  Does anyone know of another component or method to 
> keeps components proportional?  Sure would be nice of Delphi would provide 
> a built in option for this.
> 2.  I have been using the TextControl library for MSWord docs.  I would 
> like to change and am not sure they are supporting 2009;
> 3.  I have a couple hundred systems in the field using FoxPro databases, 
> so must stay with that.  I use CodeBase with CodeBase Components IV. 
> CodeBase Components IV does not plan to support 2009 and didn't even 
> support 2008.  Can someone recomment a way out of this problem?
>

3) Eventually you should go through the pain and distance yourself from 
these FoxPro databases.  At least try Advantage Database Server.  If you 
never have problems with memos and index files, then you can obviously 
ignore my statement but from my experience, those types of files always lend 
themselves to support issues.  Advantage has a free 'local' server version 
that was pretty solid.

Good luck,

Darian

Quentin


I used it for D4 (might have been earlier), D6 and now D2006. The latest version as far as I know is for D7, but the only alteration I had to do for D2006 was because I'd bought TMS controls and their TAdvPanel has an AutoSize which is different to standard controls and I had to handle the size of text in the TAdvStringGrid columns.

Roy Lambert

Roy,

| The latest version as far as I know is for D7, but the only
| alteration I had to do for D2006 was because I'd bought TMS controls
| and their TAdvPanel has an AutoSize which is different to standard
| controls and I had to handle the size of text in the TAdvStringGrid
| columns.

I played with ElasticForm a bit in D2007 but gave up.  I just wrote my
own form scaling for the app I was trying to use it for.  I don't
recall the issues I had with it, other than it didn't do what I needed
on the hi-res wide-screen monitors I am using.  I found it much easier
to just check the screen size-res and set a few font sizes and
component locations-sizes depending on that info in a scaling proc.
That was well over a year ago and I haven't looked back. <g.


-- 

   Q

04/06/2009 09:52:19

XanaNews Version 1.18.1.52  [Everyone's & Q's Mods]

"Quentin Correll" <qcorrell@pacNObell.net> wrote in message 
news:101948@forums.codegear.com...
>
> I played with ElasticForm a bit in D2007 but gave up.  I just wrote my
> own form scaling for the app I was trying to use it for.  I don't
> recall the issues I had with it, other than it didn't do what I needed
> on the hi-res wide-screen monitors I am using.  I found it much easier
> to just check the screen size-res and set a few font sizes and
> component locations-sizes depending on that info in a scaling proc.
> That was well over a year ago and I haven't looked back. <g.

Hi Q,

Were you able to successfully scale the Orpheus Page control (if you used 
it)?  I've been recently playing around with scaling my programs, and one 
place I'm having problems is with the text on the tabs of the page control. 
When I resize to a smaller size, the text on the tabs disappears.  Kinda 
makes it tough on the users....  :^)  Were there any other TP components 
that proved to be problematic?  I use many of the Orpheus visual components, 
including the table, edits, and report view.

Thanks!
Van

Van,

| Were you able to successfully scale the Orpheus Page control (if you
| used it)?

Yes, I use(d) the Orpheus Page Control.  And no, now that you've
reminded me, that's one of the things I could not make work correctly.

I also use a LOT of Orpheus components.


-- 

   Q

04/06/2009 13:55:14

XanaNews Version 1.18.1.52  [Everyone's & Q's Mods]

Darian -

Thanks for the remarks re FoxPro -> Advantage.  Yes, I do have support issues 
with corrupt index files making the product support intensive.  I, however, have
about 200 apps in the field, and would have to really automate converting a database
from FoxPro to Advantage.  Do you have any remarks that might help me should
I undertake such a task?  Any products that you might know about that would
help?  I know nothing about Advantage, but am going to look into it.

Thank you very much for your kind response...

Jim Sawyer
DataWare


> {quote:title=Darian Miller wrote:}{quote}
> "Jim Sawyer" wrote in message news:101719@forums.codegear.com...
> >I have been using Delphi 7 for years, but would like to consider 2009, but 
> >have third party issues.  Perhaps someone has some suggestions for the 
> >following:
> > 1.  I make heavy use of the GTSizer component to make the forms adjust to 
> > whatever screen resolution is being used and to keep all the components 
> > and label and grid text proportional for any screen  resolution.  GTSizer 
> > will not support 2009.  Does anyone know of another component or method to 
> > keeps components proportional?  Sure would be nice of Delphi would provide 
> > a built in option for this.
> > 2.  I have been using the TextControl library for MSWord docs.  I would 
> > like to change and am not sure they are supporting 2009;
> > 3.  I have a couple hundred systems in the field using FoxPro databases, 
> > so must stay with that.  I use CodeBase with CodeBase Components IV. 
> > CodeBase Components IV does not plan to support 2009 and didn't even 
> > support 2008.  Can someone recomment a way out of this problem?
> >
> 
> 3) Eventually you should go through the pain and distance yourself from 
> these FoxPro databases.  At least try Advantage Database Server.  If you 
> never have problems with memos and index files, then you can obviously 
> ignore my statement but from my experience, those types of files always lend 
> themselves to support issues.  Advantage has a free 'local' server version 
> that was pretty solid.
> 
> Good luck,
> 
> Darian

"Quentin Correll" <qcorrell@pacNObell.net> wrote in message 
news:102043@forums.codegear.com...
>
> Yes, I use(d) the Orpheus Page Control.  And no, now that you've
> reminded me, that's one of the things I could not make work correctly.
>
> I also use a LOT of Orpheus components.

Darn!  I was hoping you'd have the magic bullet for that one.  My entire app 
is built on page controls, and I don't really want to have to replace that 
one, since it would entail a whole lot of cut and paste to move the 
components that sit on those pages to another page control.  Ah well, back 
to the drawing board!

Thanks,
Van

No - I was not successful using GTSizer with Orpheus.  I finally stopped using 
Orpheus (I think it's now been discontinued) and went to RAIZE COMPONENTS 
and WOLL2WOLL COMPONENTS.  And for COMM PORT management I went 
to PORTCONTROLLER.  The only thing that is not automatically resized in
those components is ITEM HEIGHT in the RAIZE RADIO GROUPS, but that's 
easy to do manually.  

I guess I'm going to have to play around with writing my own resizing code for
about a thousand forms.

Keeping up with upgrades takes a lot of time!!!

Thanks,
Jim Sawyer

> {quote:title=Van Swofford wrote:}{quote}
> "Quentin Correll" <qcorrell@pacNObell.net> wrote in message 
> news:101948@forums.codegear.com...
> >
> > I played with ElasticForm a bit in D2007 but gave up.  I just wrote my
> > own form scaling for the app I was trying to use it for.  I don't
> > recall the issues I had with it, other than it didn't do what I needed
> > on the hi-res wide-screen monitors I am using.  I found it much easier
> > to just check the screen size-res and set a few font sizes and
> > component locations-sizes depending on that info in a scaling proc.
> > That was well over a year ago and I haven't looked back. <g.
> 
> Hi Q,
> 
> Were you able to successfully scale the Orpheus Page control (if you used 
> it)?  I've been recently playing around with scaling my programs, and one 
> place I'm having problems is with the text on the tabs of the page control. 
> When I resize to a smaller size, the text on the tabs disappears.  Kinda 
> makes it tough on the users....  :^)  Were there any other TP components 
> that proved to be problematic?  I use many of the Orpheus visual components, 
> including the table, edits, and report view.
> 
> Thanks!
> Van

<Jim Sawyer> wrote in message news:102065@forums.codegear.com...
> No - I was not successful using GTSizer with Orpheus.  I finally stopped 
> using
> Orpheus (I think it's now been discontinued) and went to RAIZE COMPONENTS
> and WOLL2WOLL COMPONENTS.  And for COMM PORT management I went
> to PORTCONTROLLER.  The only thing that is not automatically resized in
> those components is ITEM HEIGHT in the RAIZE RADIO GROUPS, but that's
> easy to do manually.
>
> I guess I'm going to have to play around with writing my own resizing code 
> for
> about a thousand forms.
>
> Keeping up with upgrades takes a lot of time!!!

Hi Jim,

Yeah, Orpheus has been "in the wild" for about 6 years now.  I'm planning a 
complete rewrite of my main app eventually, converting to D2009 and 
switching all the visual stuff from Orpheus to TMS.  In the meantime, I'm 
still trying to make some incremental updates, but it's getting hard to do 
without making the jump to the completely new interface, and I don't have 
time at the moment to do that project.  <sigh>  There's always something!

Yep, upgrades are the most expensive thing, in terms of manpower, that I can 
think of.  I don't think tools (or operating system) developers grasp the 
significance of it.  The cost of the new compiler is trivial.  The cost of 
moving my app to it, with the necessity of replacing Orpheus and some other 
code/components, and the accompanying coding, will probably cost $10k or 
more.  But here we are, whatcha gonna do.....

Cheers,
Van

If I understand what Advantage does, I think it REPLACES CodeBase + CodeBase Components (a separate package).  Your thoughts?

Jim

> {quote:title=Marius . wrote:}{quote}
> > 3.  I have a couple hundred systems in the field using FoxPro databases
> 
> Advantage database systems (TDataset descendant) is the only foxpro 
> compatible system i know that supports 2009. I have no idea if its 
> compatible with codebase.
> 
> http://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/advantagedatabaseserver/tdataset-descendant

>> 3) Eventually you should go through the pain and distance yourself from
>> these FoxPro databases.  At least try Advantage Database Server.  If you
>> never have problems with memos and index files, then you can obviously
>> ignore my statement but from my experience, those types of files always 
>> lend
>> themselves to support issues.  Advantage has a free 'local' server 
>> version
>> that was pretty solid.

> Darian -
>
> Thanks for the remarks re FoxPro -> Advantage.  Yes, I do have support 
> issues
> with corrupt index files making the product support intensive.  I, 
> however, have
> about 200 apps in the field, and would have to really automate converting 
> a database
> from FoxPro to Advantage.  Do you have any remarks that might help me 
> should
> I undertake such a task?  Any products that you might know about that 
> would
> help?  I know nothing about Advantage, but am going to look into it.
>


Advantage people used to prowl this newsgroup pretty regularly...your best 
bet is to get ahold of them direct. if they don't contact you first  They 
used to provide wonderful one-on-one service for presales type questions. 
It's been too long for me to give you a contact person there as we used to 
be a reseller years ago.

I'd recommend switching to the Advantage forums.  There's a link on the 
technical resources tab on this page:
http://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/advantagedatabaseserver

The time spent on the upgrade, whatever amount of time that is, is nearly 
guaranteed to be saved on lower support requirements in the future.  I 
supported Clipper, XBase applications for years... Advantage isn't a true 
silver bullet, but it's as close as you are going to get when staying in 
xbase file formats.  We even considered staying with it instead of migrating 
our main application to MS SQL when we went web-based, but at the time they 
didn't have replication.


And no, I'm not an Advantage sales rep.  :)  Just a long time satisfied 
user.  (We have one application still using it after many years.)   I have 
no idea how well their stuff works with Delphi 2009 - obviously your first 
question to look for over there..

Darian

Jim Sawyer wrote:
> If I understand what Advantage does, I think it REPLACES CodeBase + CodeBase Components (a separate package).  Your thoughts?
> 
> Jim
> 
>> {quote:title=Marius . wrote:}{quote}
>>> 3.  I have a couple hundred systems in the field using FoxPro databases
>> Advantage database systems (TDataset descendant) is the only foxpro 
>> compatible system i know that supports 2009. I have no idea if its 
>> compatible with codebase.
>>
>> http://www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/advantagedatabaseserver/tdataset-descendant

I dont know codebase at all. Instead we worked with ads for over 11 
years now. We started with the clipper libraries and ended up with ads 
for delphi. Like Jim Sawyer advised we also worked with the ads server 
from within clipper and delphi without any problems.

I think TAdsDataset would be a good starting place to replace codebase, 
and if you have a lot of problems with indexes or data corruption i 
would advise the ads server as well.

Greetings,
Marius

> since it would entail a whole lot of cut and paste to move the 
> components that sit on those pages to another page control. 

FWIW, I've changed underlying page controls by editing the text of the DFM and just
replacing the container and page types. Make a backup first, but apart from that it
is quite simple.

/Matthew Jones/

"Matthew Jones" <matthew@matthewdelme-jones.delme.com> wrote in message 
news:102236@forums.codegear.com...
>
> FWIW, I've changed underlying page controls by editing the text of the DFM 
> and just
> replacing the container and page types. Make a backup first, but apart 
> from that it
> is quite simple.

Ahhhh, that's good to know!  Thanks for the tip Matthew!

Van

Van,

| Darn!  I was hoping you'd have the magic bullet for that one.

Sorry.  Perhaps next time. <g>

-- 

   Q

04/07/2009 17:02:26

XanaNews Version 1.18.1.52  [Everyone's & Q's Mods]

Matthew,

| FWIW, I've changed underlying page controls by editing the text of
| the DFM and just replacing the container and page types. Make a
| backup first, but apart from that it is quite simple.

Hmmm,...  that sounds like it may be a viable approach.

Thanks!

-- 

   Q

04/07/2009 17:03:12

XanaNews Version 1.18.1.52  [Everyone's & Q's Mods]

Jim,

Could you possibly use ODBC to connect to the FoxPro databases? I saw a 
Visual FoxPro driver that seems to be built in to Windows XP that you could 
possibly use to create a Data Source to the database. When I connect to an 
ODBC Data Sourcen I usually use the ADO components built in to Delphi. Maybe 
you could try something similar.

Lee

> 3.  I have a couple hundred systems in the field using FoxPro databases, 
> so must stay with that.  I use CodeBase with CodeBase Components IV. 
> CodeBase Components IV does not plan to support 2009 and didn't even 
> support 2008.  Can someone recomment a way out of this problem?

.... there is an VFP OleDB Provider which can be accessed via ADO Components.

I could sucessfully read the the data but writing a new record causes an 
exception.
Maybe it is down to settings but i couldn't figure out how to solve it until 
now.
It's not a build in driver, it comes with Visual Foxpro, but maybe you can 
download it somewhere at microsoft.com for free (i think you could)

You can also use TDBF to read Foxpro tables (up to VFP9), in my opinion not 
very trustful for more complex write operations but reading is ok. Somewhere 
on the Net you can find probably a D2009 version.

Additionally you can use ADS of course (sometimes problems with some index 
expressions) but even as a long time VFP user i would recommend you to use 
another database (e.G. Nexus or Absolute Database as both allow you table 
access in a reasonable way, similar to VFP) and use TDBF or ADS to import 
your data.

Yours
Michael


"Lee Griffin" <lgriffin at griffinsoftware dot com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:102783@forums.codegear.com...
> Jim,
>
> Could you possibly use ODBC to connect to the FoxPro databases? I saw a 
> Visual FoxPro driver that seems to be built in to Windows XP that you 
> could possibly use to create a Data Source to the database. When I connect 
> to an ODBC Data Sourcen I usually use the ADO components built in to 
> Delphi. Maybe you could try something similar.
>
> Lee
>
>> 3.  I have a couple hundred systems in the field using FoxPro databases, 
>> so must stay with that.  I use CodeBase with CodeBase Components IV. 
>> CodeBase Components IV does not plan to support 2009 and didn't even 
>> support 2008.  Can someone recomment a way out of this problem?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E1A87D8F-2D58-491F-A0FA-95A3289C5FD4&displaylang=en

download address for  VFP OleDB Provider


"Michael Bickel" <Michael.Bickel@esmb.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:102802@forums.codegear.com...
> ... there is an VFP OleDB Provider which can be accessed via ADO 
> Components.
>
> I could sucessfully read the the data but writing a new record causes an
> exception.
> Maybe it is down to settings but i couldn't figure out how to solve it 
> until
> now.
> It's not a build in driver, it comes with Visual Foxpro, but maybe you can
> download it somewhere at microsoft.com for free (i think you could)
>
> You can also use TDBF to read Foxpro tables (up to VFP9), in my opinion 
> not
> very trustful for more complex write operations but reading is ok. 
> Somewhere
> on the Net you can find probably a D2009 version.
>
> Additionally you can use ADS of course (sometimes problems with some index
> expressions) but even as a long time VFP user i would recommend you to use
> another database (e.G. Nexus or Absolute Database as both allow you table
> access in a reasonable way, similar to VFP) and use TDBF or ADS to import
> your data.
>
> Yours
> Michael
>
>
> "Lee Griffin" <lgriffin at griffinsoftware dot com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:102783@forums.codegear.com...
>> Jim,
>>
>> Could you possibly use ODBC to connect to the FoxPro databases? I saw a
>> Visual FoxPro driver that seems to be built in to Windows XP that you
>> could possibly use to create a Data Source to the database. When I 
>> connect
>> to an ODBC Data Sourcen I usually use the ADO components built in to
>> Delphi. Maybe you could try something similar.
>>
>> Lee
>>
>>> 3.  I have a couple hundred systems in the field using FoxPro databases,
>>> so must stay with that.  I use CodeBase with CodeBase Components IV.
>>> CodeBase Components IV does not plan to support 2009 and didn't even
>>> support 2008.  Can someone recomment a way out of this problem?

I did the same, I wrote a small program that succsessfully removed all of 
one vendor's components and replaced them with DevExpress' components by 
reading and then re-writing the DFM.   Then it was a simple matter of 
opening each file in the IDE and letting it fix the header definitions. Last 
thing was to check events that were no longer compatible.

It was a pain but much easier than I expected.

Chris Fieldhouse wrote:
> I did the same, I wrote a small program that succsessfully removed all of 
> one vendor's components and replaced them with DevExpress' components by 
> reading and then re-writing the DFM.   Then it was a simple matter of 
> opening each file in the IDE and letting it fix the header definitions. Last 
> thing was to check events that were no longer compatible.
> 
> It was a pain but much easier than I expected.

GReplace is a tool what can change the .dfm (and .pas + .dpr) 
automaticly. Unfortunately  you still need to open all the bloody forms 
to let the ide ignore the non existent properties and fix the events. I 
love this tool and use it a lot for refactoring application code

Greetings,
Marius