Hi

Tell me, are there any members of this newsgroup who are professional
developers?  If so, I'd value your opinion on a couple of things.  One,
packages: I have just transferred one of our applications from Delphi 2 to
Delphi 3.  The size of the resulting application executable, compiled
without packages, is roughly the same as with Delphi 2 - around 1.2Mb.  If
I use packages the size of the executable is halved, but combined sizes of
the slimmed down executable and the necessary support packages is tripled!
In other words, I have to ship three times as much deliverables as before -
and I must do this because I have no way of telling if the package
libraries are on the target system.  It seems to me that the only real
benefit from the use of packages is that less space is consumed on one's
own development machine.  Provided you write dozens of applications and
have only a 200Mb disk you may think this an advantage.
Second, stability: I am increasingly concerned about Delphi 3's stability.
I keep seeing Access Violations in the VCL30 library requiring a reload of
Delphi before things then work though no changes have been made on my part.
Another thing; I had to make some changes to the code while converting from
Delphi 2 to Delpi 3 that seem unnecessary.  For instance, some code had to
be moved from several forms' OnCreate event to their OnShow event before it
would work correctly?  Then there was slightly bizarre behaviour from
third-party ActiveX controls that required code tweaking; those same
controls work perfectly and as expected in Delphi 2.
I think the compile/link time is longer too.
Candidly, I'm not sure what the advantages I've actually obtained for my
substantial upgrade price, and I'm thinking of sending it all back under
the 60 day refund agreement.
If anyone else has had similar experiences I would be most interested to
learn about them.

-Pete McCall

I work for a large insurance company. Professional? Who is?

Here are a couple of items ( not in any order) --->

*Better BDE
*Breifcase/notebook data handling
*N-tier with the client/provider components
*Better internet add-ins
*Multi-dimensional cube thing
*First try at standard Access support
*BDE now is separted so 3rd parties can develop their stuff and just hook
in
*Packages are for intranet/internet deployment so you can reduce the EXE
size for multiple apps after the inital download
*Improved Quick-Reports
*Tee-Chart
*Code completion and templates
*Plus all of the ActiveX and COM stuff

See Ya

Peter McCall <petemcc...@ap.prestel.co.uk> wrote in article
<01bc7022$4d976e20$0100007f@development>...

On 3 Jun 1997 13:33:35 GMT, "Peter McCall" <petemcc...@ap.prestel.co.uk>
wrote:

Happy coding

Stefan Paetow
ellipse data systems

== owner@ ==
== ellipse- ==
== data.com ==
== Fix the ==
== above for ==
== address ==

-
=========================================================================
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=========================================================================

1) for the developer (less space taken)
2) for distribution via Web
3) for sending updates to a user

One advise for Borland: please put on Borland HomePage:
1) a standard executable, which would install on a PC all required VCL
packages
2) a standard executable, which would install on a PC desktop version of
BDE

By doing it, I wouldn't have to worry about them. Instead, I would
always distribute only EXE w/o packages, and refer to Borland HomePage,
if the user doesn't have packages. If a user is capable of downloading
my application from the Web, s/he should be able to download and install
packages.

Michael

Hi there, Peter

First of all, for packages, well, for shrink-wrap applications, they're
not necessarily that advantageous, UNLESS you have:

- Several executables coming off a shared codebase
(I've got a modeller separate from my document system - shared a lot of
classes and code, but of course you can't compose documents in the
modeller, or make models in the document system :)

- Make a lot of upgrades available to your clients, to a small extent
over disk, but *especially* over the net - it's only the packages that
need to come down

I've heard that packages are very spiffy for intranet use, but being in
a rather small company, I haven't worked with an intranet yet :)

As to stability, I worked my way through my code with hints, warnings
and used MemorySleuth to tighten up my application in D2 - I had very
few problems migrating to Delphi 3 and haven't encountered any stability
problems yet.

I DID have to do some small tweaks to my component streaming - I had
hijacked ReadComponents for my own use, and found that the ReadListEnd
I put after it that worked in D2 didn't work in D3... so I removed it.

Also, beware any components with {$IFNDEF VER90} or {$IFDEF VER90} in
them :) (I gather those sections of code won't compile under D3, which
is VER100, even though VER90 would be intended for 32 bit)

Oddly enough, I find my greatest reward from using D3 - notwithstanding
ANY of the other new features, is the code completion.  I swear it's
cut the amount of time I've spent typing and looking up things by about
half.  It's also kinda nice to see the D3 VCL compile with two warnings
instead of 52.

Never used ActiveX components either, to tell you the truth - I get VCL
components that have the source code because, quite frankly, I can find
bugs in them almost without fail :)  (They're usually workable around,
but a buggy ActiveX component doesn't give much recourse)

Anyhow, that's my take on D3 :)

  --=- Ritchie Annand

dortmund, stardate 9496.84,

 PM> I am increasingly concerned about Delphi
 PM> 3's stability. I keep seeing Access Violations in the VCL30 library
 PM> requiring a reload of Delphi before things then work though no changes
 PM> have been made on my part.

i'm experiencing the same problem, along with other crashes, sime  
predictable, some not. if i place a toolbar insode a coolbar, drop a  
button and set both bars to Autosize, i cannot set the Toolbars  
ShowCaption property to true wthout my entire system going up like r  
rocket. same goes for two coolbars, one on the top and one on the right  
and setting one of them (neve rget a chance for the second ;-) to  
AutoSize.

cu
marc

-+- Let Joy and Innocence Prevail
## CrossPoint v3.11 ##

No problems at all with D3, stable as a rock.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wat do you see when you look at your shadow?

A pale reflection or a strong outline of you.......?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

marc hoffman <m...@donut.de> schreef in artikel
<6Z0j0s-f...@marc.elitedev.donut.de>...

dortmund, stardate 9509.81,

 u> No problems at all with D3, stable as a rock.

i've isolated the problem. Internet Explorer 4.0 (and Windows 4.1) seem to  
bring a different version of the Common Contrils .dll with them, and that  
seems to be causing the problems. after unsinstalling IE4, it works  
beautiful.

cu
marc

-+- Let Joy and Innocence Prevail
## CrossPoint v3.11 ##

On 18 Jun 1997 21:52:40 GMT, "Umbra" <um...@dds.nl> wrote:

Paul C.

Not my experience here.  D3 works.  Perhaps the old adage of
"a bad workman always blames his tools" applies here?