As I wrote
yesterday1, I bought a new and fancy computer with 16 GB memory. This
should make working with Delphi a pleasure instead of a pain. Also the new
screen is much larger than the screen on my laptop so of course all the
windows aren't scrunched up together. Connecting everything was easy,
although most of this involved getting underneath my desk. The computer has
many USB ports, both at the back and in the front. It even has a PS/2 socket
for a keyboard! Those disappeared at least ten years ago. The DVD drive does
not work at the moment - inserting a disk caused the red light to come on,
but the computer doesn't detect the drive.
The computer comes with Windows 11 which currently is not particularly
user-friendly. No doubt I will get accustomed to it in the future and change
settings so that it works the way that I want it to work and not the other
way around.
The first software that I installed on the computer was AnyDesk, but that
was only so that I could copy across the VNC program ("TightVNC") that I
have begun using at home. This program allows for remote control but only
for computers in the same network: this is fine. If I want to transfer files
from one computer to another (as one does), these files only go as far as
the router on my desk and not to the greater Internet, thus the transfers
should be faster.
I had great difficulty in setting up the SQL Manager program on the new
computer. Installing it was simple but defining the localhost connection was
difficult and took many attempts. Before installing it, I first installed
Firebird 2.5 which went quickly, but I forgot the values of certain
definitions, which is why getting the manager to work took so long. The
localhost connection is with protocol TCP/IP, port 3051. The security DB is
in the firebird/bin directory, as is the correct version of fbclient.dll. My
major mistake was trying to set up the connection with an old version of
fbclient.dll. Remember: the correct version will always be in the
firebird/bin directory.
Eventually the Manager was set up and I could register databases. At first,
I was worried as the 'register database' asks for the default character set,
and I couldn't find UTF-8 amongst the choosable options. There is,
fortunately, a button next to that field with the legend 'Get default' -
this sets UTF8. Thank God. Once this was done, I could access the new
unicode database that I had created yesterday and copied to the new
computer. I also registered the old database with character set
WIN1255.
In the Delphi conversion program, I had to update the locations of the two
database files as I had cleverly used a different name. That was easy to
fix. Running the conversion program was very simple. Yesterday I added
functionality that allows me to see when the conversion started and when it
finished: on the laptop it took 19 minutes to convert everything. On the new
computer, it took only 6 minutes!
Today I started work on converting the program that reads the database to
Delphi 10.2. At first glance, this looked very easy, as all Hebrew text
displayed on components was automatically converted to Unicode, and only the
Hebrew that resides within program texts had to be converted. But the
problems started when I tried accessing the data. Basically the UTF-8 bug
bit me once again. After no small amount of struggle, I abandoned the
database components that had served me well over the past 15 years (the
program that I'm working on was converted to
Firebird/dbExpress2 on 04/10/09) and adopted the FireDAC components. These work very
well in a test harness.
So now, I will work on adding the
dynamic SQL query3 that I have for this database. Once this is done, then I'll work
through the entire program, changing what needs to be fixed.
After working for three hours on the new computer screen, it took me a few
minutes to adjust to the smaller screen on the mobile computer, which is
where I am writing this. On the other hand, the keyboard on the new computer
is not very good; I suppose it's a function of getting used to it, but at
the moment, I am inclined to invest in a better keyboard. All morning I kept
on hitting the 'PrintScreen' key when I wanted to press F12 - that's very
annoying.
Internal links
[1] 2064
[2] 201
[3] 573
This day in blog history:
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 670 | Song festival - videos | Kibbutz | |
| 921 | Bitten by the bug | Programming, Priority tips | |
| 1373 | Winter sun (new song) - and musings on Carole King and obscure chords | Song writing, Home recording | |
| 1710 | The Ryan Universe | Tom Clancy |
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