Allen Bauer's blog...

Avalon: Yes, the Picture's Changing

Here's a response that I posted to the above article:

I can see everyone rolling their eyes at the loony that is about to make this statement.

The movement of the declarative "InitializeComponents()" code to another more suitable "language" is nothing new, nor earth-shattering. Now comes the controversial part. Take a look at Borland Delphi... "Oh, I've heard of that" No, it is *not* just that "database" tool. It is a full featured, powerful object-oriented, component-based, compiled-to-native-code, development environment.

The Visual Component Library (VCL) that is included with Delphi uses a predecessor to Avalon's XAML. By using a text or binary declarative "language", the form construction is taken out of the code. This "script" is attached to the executable as a resource. It can also be easily localized by providing an alternative script.

Avalon is clearly an evolutionary step along this same path, but I would certainly *not* characterize it as "revolutionary."

Yes, I work for Borland. Yes, I'm one of the original developers that designed and built Delphi. Delphi was launched on February 14, 1995 at the Software Development West conference in silicon valley.

If you look closely, and resist the urge to revise history, you'll see that one of the primary architects behind .NET is Anders Hejlsberg... who was one of the original architects behind Delphi. Anders left Borland and helped produce J++ and WFC, then eventually C# and .NET. If you compare WinForms, WFC, nay Delphi's VCL, the similarities are... let's just say, striking.

What I find interesting and, to be honest, somewhat frustrating, are the reactions when I state that "Delphi's been doing this since 1995." I can see them rolling their eyes, as if to say, "There's another of those Delphi crackpots who thinks they actually innovated something."

In actual fact, we at Borland are extremely excited about the technologies that are coming out of Redmond.

In fact, if you happen to *be* a Delphi programmer you need to keep your eye on the "Octane" project.. and if at all possible, attend the Borland Conference in San Jose, CA starting this weekend (Nov. 1, 2003).

So I guess it *is* true that imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Allen Bauer.
Borland Software Corporation.
RAD .NET IDE Architect.

Since one of my BorCon talks has been canceled, I will begin to post some of the content that was planned here. To get things started, here's one item that applies to C#Builder (and the upcoming Delphi 8, codenamed "Octane").

Modifying which character pairs the IDE highlights:

Insert standard disclaimer concerning editing your registry, here

Open RegEdit and go to the following key:

HKCU\Software\Borland\BDS\1.0\Editor\Source Options\Borland.EditOptions.XXXX\Pair Table

Under the above key there are string entries formatted as comma separated values, for instance the "(* *)" pair in the "Borland.EditOptions.Pascal\Pair Table" key is represented as:

0,1,2,(*,*)

The meanings of these values are, in order:

Nestable = 0 - No, 1 - Yes, 2 - Maybe
ImpliedDir = 0 - No, 1 - Yes
CharCount = 1 or 2 only
Starting string = 1 or 2 char string
Ending string = 1 or 2 char string

So to create non-nestable, implied direction pair for, say <% and %> it would look like this:

0,1,2,<%,%>

So if you don't want to highlight the quote characters since they have no implied direction and will often highlight strangely, delete the 0,0,1,',' and 0,0,1,"," entries and those pairs won't display as match characters. Note that this will also disable the Ctrl-Q+[ and Ctrl-Q+] functionality for those characters.

Due to product scheduling constraints, one of my BorCon talks has been cancelled. The "IDE Spelunking" talk will not take place on Tuesday, November 4 as planned. The Open Tools API talk is also in danger of being canceled as well. This stinks... I'll also not going to be able to be there very much either... Even though it is less than 30 minutes from Borland.

Marco Russo - Borland at PDC

It seems that some folks are certainly noticing the conspicuous placement of Borland at this year's Microsoft PDC. And, since BorCon is after MS' PDC, there'll be a lot of continued buzz... You don't want to miss it.