Sideloading for Delphi on Windows 8?

Tim Anderson wrote about what Embarcadero are planning for Delphi and Windows 8 after meeting with Embarcadero’s John Ray Thomas and Jason Vokes, I encourage you to go over and read his article about what they’re planning, and his reservations.

In short, since Delphi XE3 can’t pass validation as a WinRT app and be fully accepted on the Windows Store, they aim for a combination of having only a shortcut to the app vendor’s site in the Windows Store (like other vendors will do), and using a PowerShell script to sign the app. As Tim outlines, this isn’t exactly what you would call a smooth ride, and will require the Windows 8 Entreprise SKU apparently (thus ruling out consumer apps, i.e. would it even be possible to write the next Skype in Delphi?).

(more…)

Fiddling with L-System (part 2)


Part 1 left us with a large cryptic looking string (a recursively applied grammar applied to an axiom, for the purists).

In part 2 we’ll go from that big string to a visual representation, by making use of that string as a set of commands for a turtle language.

Turtle graphics came to fame in the days of Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos the Logo programming language, and in many ways are the grand-daddy of vector graphics languages like SVG.

For more details, read the turtle graphics article in wikipedia, it’s (at the moment) short and to the point.

(more…)

Fiddling with L-System (part 1)

The class of grammar-based fractals known as Lindenmayer system allows generating an interesting variety of geometrical and botanical visuals.

To the right is a representation of a “Fractal Plant”, which is generated from just two simple (if cryptic-looking) rules applied recursively.

In simple terms, L-System starts from a string (called an axiom), to which rules are applied recursively. Rules are a set of substitution strings for characters in the original string.

(more…)

Defeat “Print Screen” with Visual Cryptography

padlockTime for some summer fun! Someone asked in the delphi win32 newsgroup how to prevent users from doing a “Print Screen”. The answer to that is that you can’t really, since screen capture can be invoked from other applications, or your app can be hosted in a Virtual Machine, accessed over RDP, or a frame can be grabbed directly from the screen cable.

However all hope is not lost! Even if you can’t defeat a “Print Screen” or screen capture, it’s possible to make such a capture useless.

(more…)

Hello WebGL source code

With SmartMS v1.0.1 out you can now use WebGL!

Download HelloWebGL.zip (51 kB), it contains the first demo (in .opp form and pre-compiled), as well as the initial WebGLScene units which you’ll have to copy to your “Libraries” folder (the WebGL import units should have been delivered in v1.0.1).

  • GLS.Vectors: contains vector manipulations types as well as a collection of helpers to operate on them.
  • GLS.Base: contains Pascal classes to simplify basic OpenGL tasks revolving around buffers and shaders.

(more…)