Greatis

Greatis Software on Google+

2012-01-03T02:10:00.001+04:00

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/118107286892450176257/

Greatis Toys

2012-01-02T21:47:00.001+04:00

New redesigned version of our classical Greatis Toys. Your everyday utilities.
http://www.greatis.com/utilities/toys/

Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays!

2011-12-20T20:54:00.000+04:00

Greatis Software wishes you happy holidays and presents new great utility!

If you plan to learn blind typing, the new JustType program is for you. JustType will help you to be familiar with touch typing without any tutors. You'll type, not to learn to type as you do with the keyboard tutors programs.

Don't try to type. Just type.

JustType is free, so download, install and use it!

See more detailed information:
http://www.greatis.com/utilities/justtype/
Download it right now:
http://www.greatis.com/utilities/justtype/download.html

Holiday Offer from Greatis Software

2011-12-01T20:24:00.001+04:00

Greatis Software offers favorite products for very special price:

Nostalgia .Net with 20% discount (order)
Print Suite .Net with 60% discount (order)
Ultimate Pack with 40% discount (order)

Visit promo page for more detailed information.

This offer is valid only through December, so order today!

Greatis Software on Facebook

2011-10-16T21:17:00.000+04:00

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greatis-Software/165166000241413

Nostalgia .Net

2011-10-15T01:18:00.001+04:00

Easy access to Win32 API from your .Net application.
http://www.greatis.com/dotnet/nostalgia/

Delphi XE2 64-bit

2011-09-27T22:42:00.003+04:00

All our Delphi software pieces are compatible with Delphi XE2 64-bit compiler now.

http://greatis.com/delphicb/

Delphi XE2 Compatibility

2011-09-07T20:43:00.002+04:00

All our Delphi software pieces are compatible with Delphi XE2 now.

http://greatis.com/delphicb/

iGrid

2011-04-20T22:49:00.003+04:00

Greatis Software proudly presents iGrid - unique program that can plot grid for drawing right over your desktop, so you can use it everywhere, with any drawing application and without any special plugins for different graphics applications. 30-day free trial and only 9 euro for personal license.

http://www.greatis.com/promo.html

Gradient Controls .NET

2011-01-20T21:23:00.001+03:00

We just released new software for .Net developers - Gradient Controls .Net.

This component suite contains five controls with gradient background feature:

GradientLabel

GradientGroupBox

GradientPanel

GradientFlowLayoutPanel

GradientTableLayoutPanel

Gradient Controls .Net is free for non-commercial use.

See more detailed information:

www.greatis.com/dotnet/gradient/

Greatis Print Suite is released!

2010-10-20T00:36:00.002+04:00

It's free for non-commercial use, do just download and try it!

http://greatis.com/dotnet/printsuite/

Print Suite .Net is 99% released!

2010-10-01T10:40:00.003+04:00

See more details about Print Suite .Net and about the future prices:
http://greatis.com/dotnet/printsuite/

Print Suite .Net is 75% released!

2010-08-01T12:41:00.003+04:00

Texts, images, grids... Over 20 public classes... 75% implemented...

See more detailed information at:

http://greatis.com/dotnet/printsuite/news.html

Print Suite .Net

2010-05-06T01:13:00.000+04:00

Print Suite .Net started...
What do you think about it?
http://greatis.com/dotnet/printsuite/

Price is frozen

2009-11-30T16:02:00.001+03:00

Price for Form Designer .Net is frozen until the end of January. Order now and save 33%.
http://www.greatis.com/dotnet/formdes/order.html

For Delphi Fans

2009-11-30T16:00:00.003+03:00

You can upgrade any our Delphi-related product to Ultimate Pack for only 100 euro.
http://www.greatis.com/delphicb/ultimate/gift4fans.html

Delphi 2010

2009-10-07T01:12:00.002+04:00

Now all our Delphi-oriented products are compatible with Delphi 2010.
greatis.com/delphicb/

cdtrrracks.com

2009-05-04T20:14:00.006+04:00

New our hobby project was published in May 1st - cdtrrracks.com. This huge website with 40 million pages contains complete information about 2.6 million of CD albums. I never done such websites before, so it was great and useful experience. All we need is just "small" SQL database with 200 million records. :)

Form Designer .NET 1.60/2.60

2009-01-20T23:07:00.002+03:00

This new version works correctly with all the non-visual components, so you can switch between work mode, design mode, work mode, design mode, work mode, etc. without any workarounds. Free trial is available.
See more at official home page...

Greatis Delphi Pages

2008-12-09T23:02:00.005+03:00

Just uploaded new version of Delphi Pages. Each file was reduced to 10 kilobytes.

.NET Future

2008-12-01T23:05:00.003+03:00

Looks like that .NET market grows faster than Delphi market dies... I think Greatis Software must concentrate on .NET components and services... What do you think about Print Suite for .NET and XML+DLL to CHM conversion online service? ;)

Ultimate Pack for 150 euro ($200)

2008-12-01T19:43:00.003+03:00

Only in December anybody can order all our Delphi products in Ultimate Pack for only 150 euro (~$200). Price of all included products is 600 euro, so the discount is 75%.
Read more at www.greatis.com/delphicb/ultimate/

All for Delphi 2009

2008-11-28T01:02:00.003+03:00

Just published the new Delphi 2009 versions of all products. WinDowse has new version without global mouse hook and without any external DLLs.

C++ Builder 2009

2008-11-12T16:59:00.004+03:00

C++ Builder 2009 is terrible. I have multiple bugs in all of my packages... Unresolved external, ToolsAPI problems, etc... If I resolve one of these problems in the package, I have another one and so on. I have many questions about these problems in the web but I have not found any useful answers... I'm going to stop supporting C++ Builder and to concentrate on Delphi 2009, which works without any problems.

WinDowse 5.2

2008-10-21T01:37:00.005+04:00

Looks like we'll have two versions of WinDowse - old 5.1, compatible with Delphi 3-7, and new 5.2, compatible with Delphi 7-2009. The only problems with earlier versions is too large DFM file, that cannot be loaded correctly. The new 5.2 version is based on WinEvent hook instead of mouse hook (mouse hook has strange problems under Delphi 200*) and after compilation under Delphi 2009 it can support Unicode.

Form Designer .NET 3.0 - breaking news

2008-09-27T14:40:00.007+04:00

Forget MSDN, forget Microsoft's examples. If you'll follow Microsoft's documentation, your runtime designer will never work. We just found the correct way and now the BindingNavigator can be designer at runtime. I think, version 3.0 will be available soon as internal alfa for all our clients.

Form Designer .NET version 3.0

2008-09-26T13:24:00.005+04:00

Working on it right now... Looks like we can make it more native and save on-the-fly edit mode at the same time. Data binding will work fine in both of these modes at last, I hope...

Recursive folder scanning

2008-09-17T18:43:00.006+04:00

Scanning folders with subfolders is common task... In fact, all we need is to scan subfolders within our root folder and scan subfolders of each found subfolder and scan subfolders of each found subfolder and... etc. It is called recursion. It's very simple. The following example fills the list box with the full subfolder lists (even with level-depended indents):

procedure TForm1.ListBox1MouseDown(Sender: TObject; Button: TMouseButton;

Shift: TShiftState; X, Y: Integer);

procedure ScanFolder(Folder: string; Level: Integer);

var

SR: TSearchRec;

Found: Integer;

function GetIndent: string;

var

i: Integer;

begin

Result:='';

for i:=1 to Level do Result:=Result+' ';

end;

begin

Found:=FindFirst(Folder+'\*.*',faAnyFile,SR);

while Found=0 do

begin

if (SR.Name<>'.') and (SR.Name<>'..') and (SR.Attr and faDirectory <> 0) then

begin

ListBox1.Items.Add(GetIndent+SR.Name);

ScanFolder(Folder+'\'+SR.Name,Succ(Level));

end;

Found:=FindNext(SR);

end;

FindClose(SR);

end;

begin

ListBox1.Items.BeginUpdate;

ScanFolder('c:\windows\',0);

ListBox1.Items.EndUpdate;

end;

Note that we have only one ScanFolder procedure which is called recursively for each found subfolder.

RTF printing

2008-09-17T18:27:00.004+04:00

How to print RTF file? Open it in WordPad or in Microsoft Word and click the Print button. Yes. Well, and from your applications? Hm... Very simple:

ShellExecute(Handle,'print','somefile.rtf',nil,nil,SW_SHOWMAXIMIZED);

Of course, Windows will open related application, linked with RTF-files, but will close it back in a second, and you'll have your RTF document in the printer queue.

Automatical class registration

2008-09-17T18:14:00.004+04:00

As you know, in Delphi you can create the class instance by the class name (streaming system uses it internally for creating components by the name when loading from streams), so you can write something like this:

AClass:=GetClass('TLabel');

L:=TComponentClass(AClass).Create(Self) as TLabel;

This means, that you can store class names in your application or database and create any components using string representations of class names. It's convenient. But there is a problem. VCL requires preregistering all the classes to link class name and class instance using RegisterClass or RegisterClasses procedures. It's not convenient, because you have to add all the used classes manually. Fortunately, there is a trick. You can just enumerate all the existing components on your form (or even in your application with enumerating the Application.Forms) and register all the classes with the following simple code:

procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);

var

i: Integer;

AClass: TPersistentClass;

L: TLabel;

begin

for i:=0 to Pred(ComponentCount) do

if Components[i] is TPersistent then

begin

AClass:=TPersistentClass(Components[i].ClassType);

if Assigned(AClass) then RegisterClass(AClass);

end;

Drag window by client area

2008-09-17T17:38:00.004+04:00

Do not think that you need to process mouse events manually to allow drag the window by the client area. All you need is to process WM_NCNITTEST message in your window:

type

TForm1 = class(TForm)

private

{ Private declarations }

public

{ Public declarations }

procedure WMNCHITTEST(var Msg: TMessage); message WM_NCHITTEST;

end;

...

procedure TForm1.WMNCHITTEST(var Msg: TMessage);

begin

with Msg do

begin

Result:=DefWindowProc(Handle,Msg,wParam,lParam);

if Result=HTCLIENT then Result:=HTCAPTION

end;

As you can see, we call the DefWindowProc to allow Windows return default value, then analyse result and return HTCAPTION instead of HTCLIENT. There are many other result constants, so you can totally change default window behaviour by assigning any areas of window as maximize or minimize boxes, resize borders, etc.

List of all top-level windows

2008-09-17T16:43:00.004+04:00

WinAPI has many so-called "enum" functions which can enumerate many objects in system - services, printers, code pages, etc. Most useful function is EnumWindows which enumerates top-level windows. With this function you can get full list of windows by several lines of code. The following example fills list box by the enumerated windows and put the number of found windows into form caption:

function EW(Wnd: HWND; Items: TStrings): Bool; stdcall;

var

C,W: array[0..1024] of Char;

begin

Result:=True;

GetClassName(Wnd,C,1024);

GetWindowText(Wnd,W,1024);

Items.Add(C+' * '+W);

end;

procedure TForm1.ListBox1MouseDown(Sender: TObject; Button: TMouseButton;

Shift: TShiftState; X, Y: Integer);

begin

ListBox1.Items.Clear;

EnumWindows(@EW,Integer(ListBox1.Items));

Caption:=IntToStr(ListBox1.Items.Count)

end;

Note that each "enum" function receives so-called "callback" function as one of parameters. This function is called for each enumerated object.

Drawing on the entire form

2008-09-17T16:10:00.008+04:00

By default, the form canvas allows drawing on the client area only, and cannot be used for drawing on the window's borders, title bar, etc. Fortunately, there is some trick:

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);

begin

with TCanvas.Create do

try

Handle:=GetDCEx(Self.Handle,0,DCX_WINDOW or DCX_CACHE);

MoveTo(0,0);

LineTo(Width,Height);

finally

Free;

end;

This code creates DC for entrire window (within window's bounds). This DC can be assigned as TCanvas's Handle to simple drawing over the window. This code draws diagonal line over the window, including title bar and borders. By the way, if you'll pass GetDesktopWindow instead of Self.Handle, you'll have desktop canvas that will allow drwaing over the desktop and over all the opened windows.

Multiline button caption

2008-09-17T15:35:00.008+04:00

Want to have button with long multiline caption? It's very simple, because base WinAPI BUTTON class has this feature, and we can turn it on even without class recreating:

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
  with Button1 do
  begin
   Caption:='Let''s assign very long caption for this button';
   SetWindowLong(Handle,GWL_STYLE,GetWindowLong(Handle,GWL_STYLE) or BS_MULTILINE);
   Invalidate;
  end;
end;

Automated form font

2008-09-17T14:00:00.013+04:00

On my PC I have special desktop setting with standatd "Small font", but with large Tahoma, 10pt, assigned manually to all interface elements - menus, windows, icons, etc. I noticed, that some applications, like Visual Studio and so on, can detect these settings and can change the dialogs' font and dialogs' size according to used font. It's very good and user-friendly behaviour, but applications, created with Delphi and Visual Studio cannot do it. It's wrong, and I had to change it...
Everything was simple - those correct and user-friendly dialogs just get the icon title font from desktop, use it as a main font and scale the form size. Now, when we know all we need, we can create the Delphi code:

procedure TForm1.FormShow(Sender: TObject);
var
LF: TLogFont;
begin

SystemParametersInfo(SPI_GETICONTITLELOGFONT,SizeOf(LF),@LF,0);

with LF,Font do

begin

ScaleBy(Abs(lfHeight),Abs(Height));

Handle:=CreateFontIndirect(LF);

end;

end;

The C# code will not be so simple, but it is possible under .NET too:

[DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
static extern bool SystemParametersInfo(uint uiAction, uint uiParam, IntPtr pvParam, uint fWinIni);

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
public class LOGFONT
{
public const int LF_FACESIZE = 32;
public int lfHeight;
public int lfWidth;
public int lfEscapement;
public int lfOrientation;
public int lfWeight;
public byte lfItalic;
public byte lfUnderline;
public byte lfStrikeOut;
public byte lfCharSet;
public byte lfOutPrecision;
public byte lfClipPrecision;
public byte lfQuality;
public byte lfPitchAndFamily;
}

private void Form1_Shown(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
LOGFONT lf = new LOGFONT();
IntPtr p;
p = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(Marshal.SizeOf(lf));
try
{
Marshal.StructureToPtr(lf, p, false);

SystemParametersInfo(31, 60, p, 0);
Marshal.PtrToStructure(p, lf);
Font = Font.FromLogFont(lf);
}
finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(p); }
}

Upd. I'm stupid. There is another simple way for .Net:

Form1.Font = SystemFonts.MessageBoxFont;

TForm's alpha blend

2008-09-17T13:25:00.008+04:00

Since Delphi 6 or 7, TForm class has alpha blending which allow to get semi-transparent forms. It works good for top-level forms, but how it will work for embedded forms? I have created small application with two forms. Form1 as main application form and Form2 as embedded by simple code:

  procedure TForm1.FormShow(Sender: TObject);
  begin
   Form2.Left:=10;
   Form2.Top:=10;
   Form2.Parent:=Self;
   Form2.Show;
  end;

Both of these forms had AlphaBlend = True and AlphaBlendValue = 100... Compile... Run... And we see that top-level form is semi-transparent (with embedded form), but embedded form has not additional transparency, so...
1) alpha blending is not combined
2) alpha blending works for top-level forms and does not work for embedded forms

@Exp folder

2008-09-17T13:21:00.005+04:00

I have the folder with "@Exp" name on my hard drive. I have it several years. This folder is intended for saving any test projects. Just scanned this folder and have found about 1000 projects, and some of these project has some useful information and ideas. I'm starting to publish results of some tests and hope they will be useful for other software developers.

Google Chrome

2008-09-11T16:43:00.008+04:00

I use Chrome since first day, and I like it. Just noticed that rounded blocks on greatis.com are displayed incorrectly. Adding width=100% to the inner table tag parameters fixed the problem. It's strange, I never seen this problem before, but this additional parameter is very logical. Looks like Chrome is the most correct browser, but it is the most unhuman too. Now I have to fix tens block templates on our website... :)

Do you remember Turbo Vision? ;)

2008-09-11T15:48:00.010+04:00

Looking for a piece of code in the archives of my old programs and stumbled upon on the application, which I have long managed to forget - visual editor for Turbo Vision. Once I wrote a lot of different programs using Borland Pascal 6.0 and Turbo Vision (window library for DOS applications, if someone was born after the era of DOS), and one day I tired to build windows in the application code. Within a month I wrote a full-functional resource generator for Turbo Vision (I called him Regent from REsource GENeraTor). With this tool it was enough to "draw" window with all the buttons and other controls, and just load it from the application code as an external resource. This tool helped me to build programs very fast. I hope to translate its interface into English and put it into free access soon. just4fun. :)

Let's start...

2008-09-11T14:06:00.007+04:00

Just started this blog as a diary of inside development job... I'm a software developer of Greatis Software company, and I feel that I should communicate with normal people more closely. I think blogger.com is good place to do it... :)