I've been using VNC, including countless variants like UltraVNC and RealVNC, to access my home PC forever (OK, probably since around 1997 or so, so for the purposes of computer lifespans, that easily constitutes forever ). I even moderate a (not-so-active) open source project called DelphiVNC. However, I tried Remote Desktop recently, and I immediately switched to it. My reasons for doing this were:

• Speed - RD seems much faster than VNC
• Easy file copy between systems
• Can stream remote sound to the local PC
• Easy to setup and configure
• Web access

Here are some of the links that I used to get things up and running:

• Good general overview of features from MS
• Getting access to local files in an RD session
• RD Web Connection setup will let you connect to the remote PC from the local PC via IE.
• How to use RD over SSH. This is a good FAQ for other RD items, too. It appears that as of XP SP2, you don't have to run in compatibility mode, at least as long as you try to connect to another port (e.g. 127.0.0.1:3390). Step 9 in this documnet means that you need to set up a SSH tunnel to forward from port 3390 to 3389. Pay close attention to the fact that you need to logout, though. If you don't do that when ending a session, you will need to reboot the remote PC to get RD working again.

If you go to a command prompt and type, "mstsc /?", you will see the different options you can pass in. I set up a few different RD profiles by selecting the Options button, filling out the details I wanted, and saving the profile. I then made shortcuts to pass in the rdp file to let me get quick and easy access to the remote PC.

Let me know how this works for you.

I don't have all of the details fleshed out yet, but thought I'd get you the heads up. It looks like John Kaster will be coming back to Milwaukee on March 16th, from 6:30-9:00, at the same Pewaukee Marriot hotel as last year. Stay tuned for more information. I'll also try to grab the list of names I had from last year to send out an email blast, but feel free to email me or leave a comment if you know definitely that you'll be in or out. Thanks.

John Kaster announced that Update 1 for BDS 2006 is now available. This update is supposed to bring the C++ personality out of preview mode, but since some of the files that changed are used by all personalities (IDE, TLE, etc.), I imagine some slight positive benefit will occur in the Delphi personalities as well.

There is an internal QC report that I created (21701) that deals with this issue. D2006 changed the behavior of TryEncodeDateTime (which is used by RecodeTime) so that it may return negative values when you don't expect it to. For example, a call like this returns a negative value: aDate := RecodeTime(0, 12, 0, 0, 0);

A snippet from the D2006 TryEncodeDateTime method looks like this:

  Result := TryEncodeDate(AYear, AMonth, ADay, AValue);
  if Result then
  begin
    Result := TryEncodeTime(AHour, AMinute, ASecond, AMilliSecond, LTime);
    if Result then
      if AValue > 0 then
        AValue := AValue + LTime
      else
        AValue := AValue - LTime

I copied the methods I needed from DateUtils and made local copies and changed them to revert back to the code in D6. However, one person commented that performing the check, "if AValue >=0 then" would also work. Hopefully this gets fixed in Update 2.

Version 10.0.2151.25345 of midas.dll is available on my web site at http://www.distribucon.com/midas.html.

It should be backwards compatible with older Delphi versions. If you run into any problems with this new version, I highly recommend that you enter the issue into QC. MIDAS continues to get good bug fixes due in large part to people posting their issues in QC.

Have fun!

My co-worker, Jeff Chojnacki, bumped into this problem today. Basically, if you have a 2-tier setup with ClientDataset, DatasetProvider, SQLQuery, etc., and have code that looks similar to this:

   cds1.Close;
   q1.SQL.Text := 'SELECT * FROM COUNTRY WHERE COUNTRY LIKE :COUNTRY';
   q1.Params.ParamByName('COUNTRY').AsString := eCountry.Text+'%';
   cds1.Open;

you will find that the data in cds1 never updates. IOW, if you first pass an 'A', and then pass an 'F', the data will always return as if you are passing the 'A' param.

I used Jeff's test-case and did some debugging and found a work-around, and I believe, the true solution. The work-around is to just call cds1.Params.Clear after cds1.Close. The solution is that TDatsetProvider is returning ptInput Params improperly in DoGetRecords. For all of the gory details, see QC 22335. Hopefully this gets resolved in Update 2.

Bob Swart just posted this link to the DevCon05 videos. Not all sessions have Camtasia sessions, but this is a great start since Borland has never done anything even close to this before. John Kaster has mentioned before that QC ratings and comments help drive the funding and content on BDN. If you find this content the least bit valuable, take the time to comment and/or rate. Maybe next year we'll get Camtasia coverage for the entire conference!

I'll leave the fun of the Big Feature Writeups (e.g. Live Templates) to others in the blogoshpere that have already started to cover some of the new features of Delphi 2006. Instead, I'll cover some of the more mundane, but very useful new features of Delphi 2006.

Method navigation is described in the "What's New in Developer Studio 2006" file like this: "You can quickly navigate between methods in your source code using a series of hotkeys". You use hotkeys like CTRL+ALT+Up-arrow and CTRL+ATL+Down-arrow to move from one method to the next in a given unit. CTRL+ALT+Home and CTRL+ALT+End take you to the first and last method - respectively - in the unit. There is also the concept of Class Locking which will only let you navigate with those hotkeys within the current class. The documentation on how to toggle this feature is incorrect, though. The correct way to do this is to position your caret in the IDE somewhere in a class, then press CTRL+Q, followed by just the letter L. After you have enabled class lock, you are constrained to method navigation only within that class.

Note: This worked for me with the IDE Classic editor setting. I'm not sure how it works with other settings.

When using a DateTimePicker control, MS assumes that the numeric part groupings (i.e. hour, minutes, seconds, etc.) are entered using 2 digit numbers. However, this means that the text in the control and the DateTime property can often get out of sync.

Take the example where you are just editing a Time and the text of the control is set to "12:00:00 PM". At this point, the DateTime and the text are the same. If you edit the '12' portion by typing '8', no OnChange event occurs, and furthermore, if you try to evaluate the DateTime property at this point it will still be the value for '12:00:00 PM' (e.g. Use a TSpeedButton to evaluate the property since it doesn't make the DateTimePicker lose focus). If you were to type '08' instead, things would be fine. Also, if you were to use the arrow keys to select the minutes part, or tab out of the control, things would be fine. It's just the one case I mentioned above that doesn't work like I would expect.

In order to solve this for my needs, I just did a DateTimePicker1.Perform(WM_KILLFOCUS, 0, 0) before evaluating the DateTime property. Since the control was on a popup window that was going away anyway, any side-effects of doing this won't really apply.

I just got a new Dell Latitude D810. It absolutely flies. However, I was getting very weird playback when playing certain WMV files (e.g. ECO is Child's Play or the PDC sessions). The playback was twinged with orange, and lime green, and other colors where I couldn't see the video. I felt like firing up some Jefferson Airplane to complete the effect.

To solve this, I ended up opening WMP9, going to Tools | Options | Performance and turned the Video acceleration setting down to None. Problem solved.

A version of LINQ that is compatible with the RTM version of VS2005 has been released on this page.