I was wondering if anyone has written any nifty utilities for EDB.  It's always good to see other people's idea.

Here's mine. I find this utility handy when I'm writing stored procedures and functions as it allows me to see the structure of tables without having to exit out of the EDB Manager editor window.

It also creates some Delphi code and SQL code for me, saving me from doing the boring and repetitive tasks.

= Steve

Steve


There are bits & pieces in the extensions ng. If its good and you are willing to share the code post it in there, or the binaries.

I did write one small utility to clean up the accumulated customisations in the ini file, never posted it though. I'll do so later on.

Roy Lambert

Steve,

What did you use to write that utility ?  If Delphi, did you use any skinning components and, if so, which one(s) ?

I need to modernize the look of the EDB Manager and EWB IDE and deal with high-DPI displays, at the same time. It's a hard nut to crack because of the issues with skins that use fixed-size bitmaps, although it can be solved in the same way that Embarcadero did with Firemonkey and the Retina displays: simply have two versions of the same skin with differently-sized bitmaps.

A lot of companies are just punting and using web interfaces on the deskop.  Eclipse is doing so, as well as Amazon music.  But, I'm not really sure if that's an appropriate solution for developer tools.

Thanks,

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Hi Roy,

<< There are bits & pieces in the extensions ng. If its good and you are willing to share the code post it in there, or the binaries. >>

It's a work in progress.  Once it's finished I'll probably post it to the binaries.

= Steve

Hi Tim,

<< What did you use to write that utility ?  If Delphi, did you use any skinning components and, if so, which one(s) ?  >>

It's written in Delphi (XE7) and I just used one of the styles (Sapphire Kamri) that come with it.

<< I need to modernize the look of the EDB Manager and EWB IDE and deal with high-DPI displays, at the same time. It's a hard nut to crack because of the issues with skins that use fixed-size bitmaps, although it can be solved in the same way that Embarcadero did with Firemonkey and the Retina displays: simply have two versions of the same skin with differently-sized bitmaps.  >>

I don't use the skins on my commercial apps because of problems like that.  I have enough problems with people with high-DPI displays complaining that the font size is too small.  I'm still trying to work out how to solve that.

<< A lot of companies are just punting and using web interfaces on the deskop.  Eclipse is doing so, as well as Amazon music.  But, I'm not really sure if that's an appropriate solution for developer tools. >>

I don't really like web interfaces on the desktop myself.  It seems backward to me.  I've noticed quite a few apps are using Adobe Air now.

= Steve

Tim

>I need to modernize the look of the EDB Manager

If by modernise you mean totally flat with no borders and big blocks of colour please don't. I have a number of utilities that have gone that way and they look horrible. Going for that look on phones / tablets with limited processing power and screen real estate was a good decision. Doing it on a PC wasn't

Roy Lambert

Steve


>I don't use the skins on my commercial apps because of problems like that. I have enough problems with people with high-DPI displays complaining that the font size is too small. I'm still trying to work out how to solve that.

Tell them how to set their screen to 150%

Joking aside it is a problem I think they've pushed screen resolutions beyond the point where the eyeball can cope. Driven, presumably, by the fact that everyone wants to use their PC to watch movies and working on them is so yesterday.

Do you have ElasticForm? If so its resolution independence system may help. If not then you could have a look at what's still out there (ElasticForm has gone, I tried to get hold of the author to see if it could be open sourced but couldn't contact her)

http://torry.net/pages.php?id=159

Roy Lambert

Hi Roy,

<<  Tell them how to set their screen to 150% >>



<< Joking aside it is a problem I think they've pushed screen resolutions beyond the point where the eyeball can cope. Driven, presumably, by the fact that everyone wants to use their PC to watch movies and working on them is so yesterday.

Do you have ElasticForm? If so its resolution independence system may help. If not then you could have a look at what's still out there (ElasticForm has gone, I tried to get hold of the author to see if it could be open sourced but couldn't contact her)

http://torry.net/pages.php?id=159  >>

No, I haven't heard of ElasticForm.  I've tried various code that I've found on the Internet but so far nothing has worked.  I did come across an article from the Help & Manual guys that explains how to solve the problem: http://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads_delphi.html . I haven't tried it yet.

= Steve

Steve


>No, I haven't heard of ElasticForm. I've tried various code that I've found on the Internet but so far nothing has worked.

That's a shame - it stopped being supported way back and the company and author have disappeared. I wish there was a nice legal way to open source stuff like this. Some (eg Dave Baldwin with HTMLViewer) are good enough to release the code so others can keep it going.

>I did come across an article from the Help & Manual guys that explains how to solve the problem: http://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads_delphi.html . I haven't tried it yet.

I think I read an earlier version but I've downloaded it for more light reading.

Roy Lambert

Steve,

<< I don't use the skins on my commercial apps because of problems like that.  I have enough problems with people with high-DPI displays complaining that the font size is too small.  I'm still trying to work out how to solve that. >>

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8296784/how-do-i-make-my-gui-behave-well-when-windows-font-scaling-is-greater-than-100

particularly Ian Boyd's post about font size scaling.

<< I don't really like web interfaces on the desktop myself.  It seems backward to me.  I've noticed quite a few apps are using Adobe Air now. >>

It's a response to the poor job that MS and others are doing with providing a cohesive GUI target that doesn't lock you into their particular walled garden and cost you a fortune in development costs.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com