Delphi Books on Lulu

With the recent additions by Dr. Bob the list of Delphi books on Lulu.com is really starting to grow.  Although only about a dozen titles at the moment, I'm sure - or at least hope, that a number of additional titles are being worked on and will be added soon.  One specific title that I'm anxiously waiting to have a look at is the Delphi 2007 Handbook by Marco Cantù.

This growth of available titles, to my way of thinking, just has to be a good sign.  I see it as the authors making a significant effort in support of the Delphi community by making material available to the public .... they also get to make a bit of cash that they probably would have otherwise missed out on.  IMHO, the more that get in there, update their material and make it available to the people who need/want it the better.

The Delphi Books by CodeGear ...
Remember the hefty "little bundle" of material that came in the box with older versions of Delphi?  It sure would be nice to see that stuff, up to date and in the hands of the people who [although the help really is coming along] really need it.

Dust Off All That Old Stuff ...
Even get started on something new ... it's time to get it published. Even if you don't want anything for your effort, get it out there - I'll pay to get it printed out and shipped to me.  There are so many things that I've already downloaded, printed out on 8.5" x 11" pages [double sided] and stuffed into binders and "Duo-Tangs" that, I would have much preferred to have been able to get in book format.

Julian Bucknall author of  The Tomes of Delphi: Algorithms and Data Structures has taken the time to blog about his experience publishing on Lulu.

If You Wouldn't Mind ...
I really don't know how complex an issue it actually is, but I would really recommend that all authors split their books up by target ... Win32/.Net. Even [where it makes sense] if this means breaking a single book up into three individual books with some common material in all;

• Delphi FooBar for Win32 [200 pages at: $29.95]
• Delphi FooBar for .Net [220 pages at: $29.95]
• Delphi FooBar for Win32 and .Net [347 pages at: $49.95]

I think this is one of the really cool features of Lulu - nothing is actually printed until you order. Authors have these options now ... publish as many variations of your material that you like. 

I'll still continue to vote with my credit card ... I look at a book, see that it contains material that I want [Win32] and some that I don't [.Net] -but- have no idea of the ratio. Is it 30, 40 or 60% wasted paper to me? Usually under these circumstances I pass on the purchase and continue to look around for something more specific to my needs, which is too bad really - we both lose. One of the reasons that the Delphi 2007 Handbook by Marco Cantù is so attractive to me, is that it is specifically targeted [or at least advertised to be] at Win32.

I'll be looking for your books/manuals on Lulu ... thanks for stopping by,
Dave

Delphi IDE - Registry Root Switch

Didja-Know ... there is a command line switch built into the IDE that will allow you to switch the registry root that the IDE uses when loading. Yea, a completely different configuration from a short-cut you create that uses the "-r" command-line switch.

Someone mentioned it in a NG post recently and I thought it was pretty cool ... certainly worth keeping at hand but I went looking for it [to give credit to the author of the post] and came up empty.  I did manage to find a Sep 21, 2004 post by Allen Bauer [now Chief Scientist at CodeGear] that really explains it well:

---

One thing you can do with all versions of Delphi from at least D5, is use the "-r" command-line switch.  This allows you to specify the root registry key to use when loading the IDE.  For instance in D7, you could export the HKCU\Software\Borland\Delphi key to a file.  Then rename the "Delphi" key to something else, like "SafeMode".  Then re-import the exported key to recreate the HKCU\..\Delphi key.  Finally, when you run the Delphi32 application, just pass the "-rSafeMode" switch to use that key.

--
Allen Bauer
Delphi/C#Builder Principal Architect
Borland Software Corporation.

---

 This is something that would have come in handy when testing out the Keyboard Short-Cut articles I put together a few months ago ... it certainly would have saved me from making the mistakes I made due to high-jacked short-cut key strokes by 3rd party IDE tools.

I'm thinking of setting up a "BareBones" root and short-cut that has all third party tools and IDE enhancements removed. When I need to try and find conflicts it will make things a lot easier to load the IDE using that key and start adding tools/utilities until the problem occurs. Then just delete the "BareBones" key and re-load it from a saved-to-disk copy.

Lots to play with ... I'm off. Thanks for stopping by,
Dave

 

Updates:

• Delphi [2007 Win32] will build you a new [pretty much] empty key if one doesn't exist.
  Click »Start »Run and type in "bds -rBareBones" without the quotes and Delphi will create the empty BareBones root for you as it starts ...
  how cool is that ?!?

There's A Message In There Somewhere

Removed by author ... wasn't as much of a message as I had thought at the time.

A buddy of mine has a saying ... "Plan your work ... work your plan!". I think I'll try implementing it.

Thanks for stopping by,

Delphi Magazine Total Collection

... arrived today and, other than having to pay an additional $14 in duty to appease the bloody tax man at the door, I'm pretty excited about it.

I've been digging around at various magazine and DUG sites, and have found some real information gems recently. I have been meaning to blog about it, it just hasn't happened ... yet. I've been specifically looking for old Win32 articles, you know before all this .Net nonsense. You know the ones ... the articles that delve deeper [than you normally find in a book/blog] into a specific underlying principle of coding in Object Pascal for Win32, and cover it in greater detail. Although there is still a ton of good stuff out there, even for us newbies and hobbyists, a lot of it appears pretty old at first sight. This, initially tends to put you off looking any deeper -but- one of the really cool things about Delphi is that the core information that you'll get from these older articles, is likely to be either still applicable or easily updated to the existing environment/version.

I initially started off at The Delphi Magazine site, snooping around to see what "old stuff" I could snag for free. Well, there were just too many articles [mostly older, non .Net stuff] that I wanted to read that I couldn't get hold of. So, with considerable effort, I pried the CC out of the wallet and coughed up for the Total Collection and am pretty happy that I did.

I still plan on blogging about all the really interesting Win32 articles that you can find if you take the time to dig around a bit ... it just is going to have to wait. One cool place, in addition to The Delphi Magazine site, that you can start sniffing around is The Developers Group for Delphi (Win32/.NET) and C# Professionals ... lots of Win32/.Net stuff for information miners there. In addition, look up some of the authors from these sites. A lot of them have posted the articles and/or more like them, on their personal/company sites. Understanding basic/advanced principles, creating components, ... there's reams of it out there - go have a peek. Me, I'll be busy for the next while reading my Total Collection from The Delphi Magazine. Hey ... go get your own :)

Thanks for stopping by,
Dave