Comments for Craig Stuntz's Weblog

Comment on JAWS, XP Themes, and Accessibility by Craig Stuntz

Craig Stuntz — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:12:35 +0000

Aleksander, JAWS is, to some degree, Delphi-aware.

Comment on JAWS, XP Themes, and Accessibility by Aleksander Oven

Aleksander Oven — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:08:16 +0000

I’m surprised to hear a screen reader is even able to read TLabel’s Caption, themed or otherwise. As a TGraphicControl descendant, TLabel doesn’t have a HWND, which means it’s not capable of processing messages on its own. I guess it’s probably the TLabel.FocusControl that somehow intercepts and processes the message on TLabel’s behalf, so it might work in this case.

Have you tried using TStaticText instead? AFAIK, that one is better suited for applications that need to be compatible with screen readers.

Comment on Delphi 7 SP1 DataSnap Fixes on the Way by Carlos Alberto Solla

Carlos Alberto Solla — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:26:28 +0000

Craig,

I’m using a ClientDataSet connected to a IBQuery through a DataSetProvider.
My query brings data from two tables via a join. How can I update the data of Clientdataset, showing the data brought the table join, after an insert in Clientdataset?

Comment on Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Beta Installation Fails by Craig Stuntz

Craig Stuntz — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:22:49 +0000

Holger, the one hotfix mentioned in the readme is not the only problem. Removing it by itself did not allow the install to succeed.
Yes, you need the 3.5 beta. It’s installed by the same installer as VS.

Comment on Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Beta Installation Fails by Holger Flick

Holger Flick — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:16:31 +0000

Well, when I read all the requisites you need in order to install the beta, I decided against it. What you mentioned was one of them. However, I read the readme first

Furthermore, I think you need a beta of .NET 3.5 as well and thus it is very risky to fiddle around with. I’d strongly advise to be aware of the warnings given to only use it in a test environment (like a VM)

Comment on Creating Your First Automated Daily Build with Delphi 2007 by Randy Sill

Randy Sill — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:25:18 +0000

Automated builds are a must and certainly are not that hard to set up. I’m using NANT and Subversion and have a build script that compiles all required resources, exes, dlls, then creates 3 installation packages and version dates them. I’ve been meaning to plug cruise control into the build process, but have not yet. One of the best advantages is consistency of the deliverables.
As far as components versioning goes, I use a DCC32.cfg file to define the paths to the components a particular project requires. Every project can have different versions of components if required. My build machine only has the command line compiler and any required library files. I’ve also implemented builds in Virtual Machines which has the benefit of preserving an environment that may be hard to reproduce several years down the road.

Comment on \"Let It Crash\" Programming by miguel rodriguez

miguel rodriguez — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:45:00 +0000

for years, I tried to make systems without failures, and I failure, the very day I accepted the failure and I worked on how to handled it, it suddenly all became stable and robust, because at least from the client perspective it doesn’t matter what is behind the wall, I know this mental model it is not appreciate as It should be, but everything will be appreciate in time, I have no doubt about it.

Comment on \"Let It Crash\" Programming by Stephen Hoffman

Stephen Hoffman — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:33:24 +0000

The OpenVMS Distributed Lock Manager has offered analogous capabilities for many years, though the application itself is expected to fully participate in the cooperative processing.

If the application or the host within the cluster crashes, then DLM frees up the (arbitrary) locks (formerly) held by the failed application (or failed host), and cooperating applications are then granted the locks and can detect the failure and can take failure-appropriate action.

This application processing can range from a full restart to specific recovery processing, to transactional-style sequencing. It’s all fully programmable.

Further, cluster locks can easily be used akin to the C wire that was described; where acquiring a lock can cause all processes monitoring the lock to take an application-specific action.

A block of arbitrary and application-specific information can also be passed along with the lock itself. This could be a next invoice number, or a count of crashes, or information related to the failure or the recovery and restart; this is an entirely arbitrary block of data.

Comment on Code Signing for Windows Mobile 5 by Jay Lance

Jay Lance — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:15:38 +0000

It’s now $350 for getting set up (includes 10 signing events) and $12.50 per event @ 10 events down to $6.50 @ 1000 events. You can find the fees if you go through the signup process. This is difficult for smaller software companies to swallow, especially if you are trying to serve your customers by having frequent software releases. It adds up when every EXE or DLL in you CAB needs to be signed, and then the CAB itself needs to be signed, times the number of versions in each release, times the number of releases, plus the number of mistakes you make. Anyone doing freeware is going to be immediately turned off to the Windows Mobile platform as a result.

Comment on Literate Programming by Jakob

Jakob — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:00:57 +0000

I think one problem of literale programming is the lack of good and easy tools. Hypertext was a good idea long before WWW but it did not really succeed until there was Mosaic. All literale programming systems I know are limited to a specific programming language and/or a specific typesetting system and driven only by a small group of developers.