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Bob Swart (aka Dr.Bob) - Medical Officer Dr.Bob's Delphi Clinics
 Dr.Bob's Experts/Wizards v2.50
See Also: Dr.Bob's SwarTools for Delphi and C++Builder

Advanced and Integrated Expert Support for 16-bit and 32-bit Delphi/C++Builder Development

  1. DRBOB1.ZIP (436,707) Dr.Bob's Collection of 16-bits Delphi Experts v2.0
  2. DRBOB2.ZIP (706,134) Dr.Bob's Collection of 32-bits Delphi Experts v2.01
  3. DRBOB250.ZIP (739,660) Dr.Bob's Collection of 32-bits Delphi/C++Builder Wizards v2.50
    Version 2.50 is single source code and binary compatible with Delphi 2.x, Delphi 3 and C++Builder!
Note that there are no versions of my Experts for Delphi 4 or higher or C++Builder 4 or higher, sorry!

Dr.Bob's Collection of Delphi/C++Builder Wizards (they used to be called Experts) consists of a dozen Delphi Wizards (seven C++Builder Wizards) in three different forms (19 total Wizards, with two invisible Wizards to "group" them together in the Help-menu):

Introduction

The 13 IDE Experts are all combined in one DRBOB.DLL of only 740,864 bytes (678,176 for the 16-bits version). This may seem a big DLL, but consider the fact that it actually holds 19 expert classes as well as over a dozen form definitions!

Dr.Bob's Expert About Screen...

This About Splash screen (standard Expert) was designed using the Splash Form Expert, and shows up at start-up of Delphi (if the DRBOB.DLL is installed).
If you select this form from the Help menu, then you can close it by clicking on it with the left mouse button.

Dr.Bob's FileOpen Expert...

The FileOpen standard Expert consists of a simple OpenDialog to let you open just about any file in the Delphi IDE. Quite handy if you want to look at .INT files, or any other files than the .DPR files without having to go to a lot of trouble with the current Project dialog.
Note that the file is opened as project, so any loaded files in the IDE will be closed (you will be asked if you want to save). You can also use this expert to open up any .PAS files and be able to instantly recompile them.

Dr.Bob's SysUtils Info Expert...

The SysUtils Info standard Expert, developed for the Experts chapter in the book The Revolutionary Guide to Delphi 2.0 from WROX Press, will show a modeless form with information regarding the current currency, date, time, system and disk information.

Dr.Bob's Resource Info Expert...

The Resource Info standard Expert will show a modeless always-on-top form with information regarding the current state of available System, User and GDI resources, as well as the available high and conventional memory. There is now also a "mark" (left) and "used" (right) button. Clicking on the Mark-button will make a snapshot of the current resource and memory values, while clicking on Used-button will show the difference between the current state and the marked state. This way, you can easily identify the resource and memory requirements of your applications (just "mark" before a run, and click on "used" during running the application) as well as identify possible resource leakage (if "used" is not zero after a run).
On Windows 95, you need to have the "thunking" rsrc32.dll available (part of the Microsoft Windows 95 standard Resource Monitor application, available on your Win95 installation CD-ROM). Otherwise, a dialog will show up to inform you that you should install the Windows 95 Resource Monitor (that contains the 32-bit thunking DLL rsrc32.dll).

Dr.Bob's Program Manager Expert...

The ProgMan standard Expert will create a shortcut or progman item in an existing or new program manager group (or desktop folder), using the current target of the loaded project, i.e. PROJECT1.EXE.
This expert can be used to create shortcuts that enable you to test your current project executable outside the IDE without having to quit Delphi (you can click on the icon/shortcut you've just generated).

Dr.Bob's Project Info Expert...

The Project Information standard Expert will show a modeless dialog with information about the current project, including the number and names of the units and forms in the project. With the Expand-button, all units can be opened at once, while the Reduce-button will close all units and forms (to bring down resource usage, a good thing to do right before another run).

Dr.Bob's DLL Source Expert...

This DLL Source Generator standard and project Expert, first developed in an article for issue #3 of The Delphi Magazine, will give you a lot of options to generate a DLL source skeleton file which is opened in the Delphi IDE as new project (to be compiled immediately).

The resulting DLLs compile with both Delphi 1 and 2, as they have embedded {$IFDEF} statements that make sure the stdcall calling convention is used for Win32 instead of a regular export.

Dr.Bob's Component Expert...

The Component standard and project Expert will enable you to enter the information for a new component, just like the default Component Expert of Delphi, but with one significant additional feature: the resulting source file is immediately opened as new project in the Delphi IDE. So we don't have to re-open it to be able to compile it (with the FileOpen Expert, for example). This speeds up component testing and hence component development, as we can do syntax checks while writing code (without having to install the component first).

Dr.Bob's Splash Form Expert...

The Splash Form standard and form Expert generates nice Splash screens for your projects. All you need to do is select a nice bitmap, and the form will be created automatically. Double-click on the bitmap to get a preview of what the Splash screen will look like.
Note that the project main .DPR file is automatically modified to make sure the Splash screen is created and shown when your application starts, and destroyed when your main form is activated (so the Splash screen will only be active during the time your application loads before your main form is shown).

Marco & Dr.Bob's Table Form Expert...

The Table Form standard and form expert is written by Marco Cant— and Dr.Bob during a seminar for the UK-BUG (UK Borland User Group). Thanks again for Joanna and Phil for giving us the opportunity to get the best out of this "live" session. If you want to know how the experts works internally, then check out issue #7 of The Delphi Magazine where we've written down the implementation details in an article How To Write Your Own Database Expert.
The Table Form Expert will guide you through four pages that ask you to pick an alias, a table, field from the table, and finally offer you a possibility to alter the names (labels) for these fields that will be created on the resulting form. Just like the Database Form Expert that is part of Delphi itself, only this time you're able to give each field its own label.
An additional feature that has been added in version 2 is the CreateEmptyTable method inside the generated form, that will enable you to generate a new empty table with the fields and indexes of the one the form needs.

Dr.Bob's 16- to 32-bit Resource Converter...

The standard 16- to 32-bit Resource Converter Expert is able to convert 16-bit binary resource files which contain only bitmaps (.DCR files and .RES files with only bitmaps for example) to 32-bits resource files. Quite handy if you plan to upgrade your components including component bitmaps to Delphi 2.0, without having to re-work your resources using that image editor again.

Dr.Bob's Dynamic DLL Expert Loader...

The DrBob.DLL comes with a total of 13 DLL Experts. This standard Dynamic Expert Loader Expert offers you the ability to load other DLL experts (like EXPTDEMO.DLL, if not already loaded, or TRIPLEX.DLL - from John Howe, with another collection of 5 great Experts inside). Note that if a standard DLL expert is loaded this way, the Help menu won't get updated. So it will only work correctly for Form and Project DLL Experts that get loaded by the Dynamic Expert Loaded.

Dr.Bob's C DLL Header Converter...

The final standard, form and project expert is the well-known HeadConv C DLL Header Converter Expert. This expert will assist in converting C DLL header files to Delphi implicit or explicit import units. The version inside DRBOB.DLL will already be able to generate both implicit and explicit import units (the previous unregistered version of HeadConv 1.02 was only able to generate implicit import units).

Uninstallation

If, for some reason, you'd like to uninstall Dr.Bob's Collection of Delphi IDE Experts, then you need to start REGEDIT and manually remove (delete) the key DrBob at the location My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\Delphi\2.0\Experts as follows:

The wizards are freeware, provided as-is, but use at your own risk (I cannot be held responsible for anything that goes wrong while using this tool), but I'm open to feedback, suggestions and other comments by e-mail to info@eBob42.com.
This webpage © 1995-2009 by Bob Swart (aka Dr.Bob - www.drbob42.com). All Rights Reserved