Chuck's Delphi Book Reviews

Secrets of Delphi 2 by Ray Lischner

• Summary
  While the title only mentions Delphi 2, most of the information applies to Delphi 1 and 3.    (And in fact, you can download an updated set of examples specifically for Delphi 3 from Ray Lischner's web site).    

  I purchased this book simply because of the excellent and useful advice Ray gives out on the Delphi usenet groups.     He is always giving out useful tidbits that can't be found anywhere else.     Ray is definitely an asset to the Delphi community.    

  This book is targeted at the intermediate-advanced developer, who wants to go beyond the capabilities built into Delphi.     There are sections that explore some often misunderstood features of Delphi's Object Pascal language, such as Streams and the TList class.     Other sections document some advanced capabilities that are interest to those who create their own components, such as undocumented property editors and how to create online help for your components.     Still other sections explore some advanced Windows programming topics, like the Registry, Internal Windows messages, and Windows Heap memory.    

• Contents
  
  • Chapter 1: The Readiness is All
  • Chapter 2: Components and Properties
  • Chapter 3: Streams and File I/O
  • Chapter 4: Form Files
  • Chapter 5: Dynamic Arrays: The TList Class
  • Chapter 6: The Elegant, Versatile TStrings Class
  • Chapter 7: Run Time Type Information
  • Chapter 8: Registry Secrets
  • Chapter 9: Property Editors
  • Chapter 10: Secrets of Property Editors
  • Chapter 11: Designers and Forms
  • Chapter 12: Component Editors
  • Chapter 13: Metacomponents
  • Chapter 14: Secrets of Delphi's Windows Interface
  • Chapter 15: Secrets of Data-aware Components
  • Chapter 16: Application Secrets
  • Chapter 17: Internal Component Messages
  • Chapter 18: Undocumented Property Editors
  • Chapter 19: Heaps of Secrets
  • Chapter 20: On-line Help for your Component
  • Chapter 21: Advanced Design Tools
  • Chapter 22: Virtual Method Table
  • Chapter 23: Experts and the Open Tools API
  • Chapter 24: Summary

• In Depth
  
  • Chapter 8, Registry Secrets
    One of the biggest changes from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 for the developer was the Registry.     This chapter discusses the Registry structure itself, and the classes built into Delphi to handle Ini files, and Registry files, and shows how to write code that will work with both.     For 32 bit apps, it is recommended that your application use the registry to store program information. For 16 bit apps, you will need to use .INI files. But using the technique described in this chapter, your app can use the same class to create the right one.     There is also in-depth documentation the TRegistry and TRegIni components.

  • Chapter 13, Metacomponents
    This chapter is an example of some behind-the-scenes information that only Ray Lischner provides.     It shows how to create Metacomponents: Components that interact with other components, even at design-time.     There are two main projects in this chapter.     The first is an Inspector Component that can inspect the properties and property editors of other components. The second is one of my most-used "components".     It is a metacomponent that will rename all other components based on your naming rules.     For example, all my Editboxes start with edt (like edtFirstName, edtLastName, etc), but Delphi insists on creating them with the name Editbox1, Editbox2, Editbox3. With the Naming metacomponent, my Editbox names start out edt1, edt2, edt3.     Not a huge change, but it's better than Delphi did.     The chapter discusses every aspect of creating these metacomponents, revealing all that occurs when you drop a component on your form.

  • Chapter 14, Secrets of Delphi's Windows Interface
    I would bet that there is at least 1 tidbit in this chapter for any Delphi developer.     As great as Delphi is, there are always times where Delphi's behavior is not quite what you desire.     This chapter will show you how to "fill in the gaps" in Delphi.     You will learn Windows API calls that you use with normal Delphi components, to provide capabilities beyond the default Delphi behavior.     Better control over Parent/Child forms, flexible tabstops in a TMemo, a fixed-length memo control.     The chapter goes on to cover Printing, Graphics, Palettes, and finally Threads.     The coverage of Threads makes up half the chapter, and it explains how to use threads safely and correctly to allow your application to multitask.

• Recommendation
  I recommend this book to every Delphi programmer.     For most of this information, it is the only place you will ever find it.     The book shows how to apply these secrets to create better, more powerful, and more flexible applications, and there is always a eye toward creating more reusable code.     The only problem I've found with this book is that it won't ever stay on the shelf, some Delphi developer is always using it!

• About the Book
  Secrets of Delphi 2
  By Ray Lischner

  ISBN : 1571690263

  Published by Waite Group Press

  The book includes a CD-ROM that contains all the source code from each chapter, including Components, Sample Apps, and IDE Experts.

  The list price of the book is US $49.99 , CANADA $70.95

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