Embarcadero has released an update for Delphi 10 Seattle which has quite a few significant bug fixes in it. There are quite a few fixes for the C++ compiler, a few fixes for the VCL, a couple fixes for the Help area, and some fixes that polish up the IDE as well. Apparently there was a crash with TPushEvents that is now fixed. There was an issue with adding your own JAR files to Android apps (which was causing it not to work; a workaround was available). And one IDE issue giving people trouble “IDE is unusable without scaling on high DPI” is listed as fixed. Some fixes are IOS or Android specific. Marco Cantu has a blog post up explaining some of the other fixes. Over 250 bug fixes are included. Here are the Firemonkey Framework specific customer reported bugs that are listed as fixed:

• Mobile app with TPushEvents does not run and it shows black screen.
• LanguageDesigner: cannot enter any translations
• Mixed Styled and Platform controls: problems with Taborder
• iOS exception on desctruction of platform editbox
• Transparent.style menuitemstyle is wrong
• Blank 32 bit application crashes immediately on iPhone 5 with ios9
• The phone vibrates when you create a notification (EnableSound := False)
• Custom FireMonkey component styling issue
• TStyleManager.SetSystemStyle removed in Seattle
• [Accessibility] Memory leaks and exceptions
• TSpeedButton
• Uses FMX.PhoneDialer.pas app crash
• Delphi 10 Seattle Android problem, add a *.JAR and deploy to a physical machine have error

Head over and check out the full list of bug fixes available for Delphi 10 Seattle.

Update: Also download a Hotfix for a Delphi 10 Seattle IDE memory leak.

Developer David Berneda from Steema Software has released a beta version of a Business Intelligence (TeeBI) library for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle. TeeBi “enable data gathering, processing and optionally interacting with machine-learning algorithms”. You can import data from a vast number of formats like Excel, CSV, JSON, etc. and then you can process the data with filters, sorting, etc. very quickly. Performance is a key aspect of the library. Integrations are provided for interfacing with R and Python languages. There are a number of supported grid and import components like Woll2Woll and TMS for displaying data plus SuperObject and UniDAC for importing it. It comes with a TBIDataSet component which behaves like TDataSet. The library looks to support Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. Reading the license it seems like you can compile and distribute your application using the library for free but you can’t distribute the library itself in source code form. As it is currently in beta the license may change when it is released. There is a pretty extensive Starting Guide and a number of examples included. Full source code is provided with the library. It probably works with Appmethod and C++Builder as well. If you are processing big data or dealing with business intelligence this is something to check out to see if it meets your needs.

Head over to the Google+ community site and download the latest version of the TeeBI source code and get the latest updates.

Developer Thomas G. Grubb from RiverSoftAVG has upgraded his SVG Component Library with new functionality and support for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle. SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics and is an industry standard vector based file format. Vector graphics are drawn at runtime which allows them to appear smooth regardless of the resolution and DPI of the device. They can be a good alternative to shipping multiple bitmaps for each different device resolution in your apps. This new version has an SVG image list component which can save memory and disk space especially on mobile. You can also edit and save SVG files with these new components in addition to Delphi binary files plus you can now embed the SVG files within your applications. We’ve covered these components before as well. The components work on Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. There is a huge list of other features that the SVG Component Library provides. This is a commercial component suite and there is also a bundle of the other RiverSoftAVG component suites you can get it with as well. There are multiple FMX and VCL demos demonstrating these components. You should be able to use them with Appmethod and C++Builder as well.

Head over and check out all of the great features of this SVG Component Library for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle.

Dew Research has released an upgraded version of their MtxVec library and addons for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle. MtxVec is an object oriented numerical library for mathematical, signal processing and statistical functionality. On Windows machines it leverages mathematical, signal processing and statistical SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.2 and Intel AVX 1.0 and AVX 2.0 instruction sets. But it also supports Android, IOS, and OSX out of the box. This is their first version which offers comprehensive support for all four platforms. The add ones for MtxVec are DSP Master which is the advanced signal processing package, Stats Master which is the statistical package, and Data Miner which are the artificial intelligence enabling components. We’ve covered these components before for XE6 and XE7. This is a commercial library but there are free trials available and if you are doing any kind of complex real time data processing you owe it to yourself to check these out as the performance gains could be substantial. The trial versions are also free for educational usage according to their site. These components should also work with Appmethod and C++Builder.

Head over and check out all of the different features of these math libraries for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle.

Developer Babak Yaghoobi has released an upgrade to his DPF IOS Component Suite with support for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle on IOS9. DPF IOS is a collection of platform native controls, a massive library of Objective-C interface code, and a huge number of demos. If you can’t figure out how to do something with Firemonkey on IOS you should check out this component suite. Whether you use these components directly or you just use some of the interface libraries this is a must have component suite to check out. Obviously the components only work on IOS and not Windows, OSX, or Android but they do give you platform native performance on IOS. The trade off is that you lose the universal interface across all platforms. One caveat is that if you use a visual DPF IOS component on your form you can not mix them with FMX components. You can however have FMX and DPF forms within the same application. This new version has expanded TDPFCamera support, and new TDPFLocalAuthentication component, and plenty of bug fixes for good IOS9 compatibility. The component suite is free and open source. You should be able to use it with Appmethod and maybe C++Builder.

Head over and check out the full feature set of the DPF IOS Components for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle.

Developer Roman Yankovsky from SourceOddity and David Millington from Parnassus have teamed up to create a FixInsight+Parnassus Navigator IDE tool bundle for Delphi 10 Seattle. There is a blog post about the bundle. FixInsight is a static code analysis tool which helps you find mistakes in your code before they come back to haunt you. There is a blog post showing some examples of the types of problems you can find with FixInsight here. On large code bases FixInsight can probably save you a huge amount of time and/or find copy+paste bugs that are hard to catch on your own. It is bundled with Parnassus Navigator which is a code navigation IDE plugin for Delphi. Parnassus Navigator comes with a popular minimap scrollbar (a scrollable mini view of your code to the right of your code window). It also has a quick function navigation window. We’ve covered Parnassus Navigator before. This bundle is a commercial IDE plugin set but there is a free trial available so you can check it out before buying. The Pro version of FixInsight comes with a command line tool as well. If you’re building apps for Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows you should these two plugins and others to really speed up development. You may be able to use these plugins with Appmethod as well.

Head over and download the free trial of FixInsight+Parnassus Navigator for the Delphi 10 Seattle IDE.

TMS Software has released a new logging framework for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle. A logging framework allows you to log data or messages while your code is running. It is a useful method of debugging when you are working across a myriad of devices. The new logging framework provides a huge number of output interfaces including support for the console, HTML, Text file, CSV file, TCP/IP, Browser, Windows Event Log, and others. The logging framework is built with support for Firemonkey so it runs on Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. It supports multithreading and it’s thread safe. It is paired with a Delphi Seattle IDE plugin which helps automate the tasks of adding the needed units, output handler code, and toggling comments. There is even a separate TCP/IP client which makes it easy for viewing logs remotely. It should also work with Appmethod and probably C++Builder. This is a commercial framework but a free trial is available.

Head over and check out all of the different features of TMS Logging and then download the free trial.

Developer Thomas G. Grubb from RiverSoftAVG has upgraded his SVG Component Library with new functionality for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle. If you haven’t run into Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) before it is an industry standard vector based file format. In this latest version you can Load, Edit and Save SVGs as SVG (which is in XML) and Delphi Binary. You can use it’s TRSSVGImageList component to save memory in your mobile apps with image lists. The text and gradient support is vastly improved over previous versions. The TRSSVGImage component can detect and fire mouse events. You can even embed SVG files in Delphi Forms using the TRSSVGDocument component. Vector graphics are drawn at runtime which allows them to appear smooth regardless of the resolution and DPI of the device. They can be a good alternative to shipping multiple bitmaps for each different device resolution in your apps. The developer has done a great job upgrading these components to support the all of the latest versions of Delphi and Firemonkey. The components work on Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. There is a huge list of other features that the SVG Component Library provides. This is a commercial component suite and there is also a bundle of the other RiverSoftAVG component suites you can get it with as well. Check out all of the VCL and FMX demos as well.

Head over and check out the latest new features in the SVG Component Library for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle.

Developer jkour has released a tab control for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle. This new tab control allows you to build interfaces with Firemonkey similar to the tabs found in web browsers like Chrome and Firemonkey. The tab control is different than the built in TTabControl because it uses Frames for each tab. In addition to the Frames it allows you to name and access the tabs via a tag string. The tab control holds several tab items each tab item is a Frame. The tab button list can be customized with styles and it also supports mouse over preview of each tab which is a nifty feature. It has the option to set a right click menu on each tab button as well. The control is free on Github and available under the MIT license. There is a demo project which shows how to use it. I assume it should work under Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. Obviously the mouse over and right click functionalities will only work on platforms that support a cursor. You may be able to use this control with C++Builder as well.

Head over and download the full source code for the unique frame based Tab Control for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle.

Developer Yaroslav Brovin has an updated version of his FGX component suite for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle available. The component suite started out around an activity dialog and a progress dialog component and now has quite a few other must have components for Android and IOS in it as well. There is an instant messaging display class called TfgToast. There is an image flipping component called TfgFlipView with mulitple effects for switching between photos. There are three helper animation TfgPositionAnimation,  TfgPosition3DAnimation, TfgBitmapLinkAnimation components.  Of coarse there is TfgProgressDialog and TfgActivityDialog for showing progress and activity dialogs using the native dialogs on each platform. TfgColorsPanel and TfgGradientEdit are provided for selecting colors. And lastly, TfgLinkedLabel is for opening web browser links, TfgApplicationEvents is for providing easy access to the app events, and TfgVirtualKeyboard is for allowing you to access and customize the virtual keyboard. The FGX component suite is free and some of the components should probably work on all four platforms which are Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. The description information about the component is in Russian so use a browser translator if needed.

Head over and download the full source code for these must have Firemonkey components in Delphi 10 Seattle.

Mirror: Download it from Github.

If you are looking for an easy way to debug your Delphi 10 Seattle Firemonkey apps for IOS on OSX you might want to take a look at LemonJar. With older versions of IOS you could use the Iphone Configuration Utility to access the IOS console log but for more recent versions of IOS LemonJar is a good solution. Technically you can still access the console log on OSX in XCode but it is hard to find and use. LemonJar is a single purpose app for OSX which easily gives you the output from the IOS console. At the moment it is free to download and use. Debug data from IOS itself and the apps running on the device is displayed throught the IOS console. You can even write out your own debug messages to the IOS console with the Delphi NSLog() function. Brian Long created a wrapper function called Log() which does the conversion from a Delphi string to the IOS string. Here is that function:

uses
iOSapi.Foundation, Macapi.ObjectiveC;
...
function PNSStr(const AStr: String): PNSString;
begin
Result := (NSStr(AStr) as ILocalObject).GetObjectID
end;
//
procedure Log(const AStr: String); overload;
...
procedure Log(const AStr: String);
begin
{$IFDEF IOS}
NSLog(PNSStr(AStr));
{$ELSE}
{$MESSAGE WARN 'Only currently implemented for iOS'}
{$ENDIF}
end;

Head over and download LemonJar and start debugging through the IOS Console with your Firemonkey apps in Delphi 10 Seattle.

Developer Daniel Horn has released a runtime based object inspector for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle. The original version of this code is an Object Debugger created by Marco Cantù for VCL. What this tool allows you to do is embed an object inspector (like you have in the Delphi IDE) into your runtime applications and inspect object properties. This can greatly enhancing your debugging capabilities because you don’t have to redeploy your application or write text out to a console to investigate objects (and change properties). You should be able to compile this into your Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows applications. Apparently there is a mobile demo and a desktop demo because the desktop version has a floating form for the object inspector. The inspector itself is within a TFrame so you can embed it practically anywhere. Full source code is available under an MPL 2.0 license.

Head over and download the runtime object inspector for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Seattle from Github.

Embarcadero released Delphi 10.1 Berlin today which is an upgraded version of Delphi and Firemonkey for Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. This release features enhanced Bluetooth support, official Android 6 Marshmallow support, a live visual app designer for Firemonkey, connectivity and demos for a number of IoT devices, Firemonkey high DPI support, plus a significant number of bug fixes across the board from FMX, to VCL, to the compilers, and in the IDE itself. Here is a full run down of the new functionality that jumps out at me:

The Berlin release features official support for Android Marshmallow (and there are also Object Pascal translations of the Android 23 API here).

There is a new TAddressBook component for Android and IOS which gives you access to the on device Address Book. You can fetch all, grouped, or individual contacts. You can add, remove, and edit existing contacts and groups. In older versions of Delphi you can access the Address Book with this component.

The Style Designer which allows you to customize the visual design of components has been greatly enhanced to include a preview panel, zooming, clipboard support, and multi selection. It is now easier to style TListView items because there is an enhanced TListView control which you can access in the Form Designer. The Image List Editor has also been enhanced. The Form Designer can now be undocked to take advantage of multiple screens.

The FireUI Live Preview feature allows you to add an app to your Android, IOS, OSX, or Windows device and then link your device to the Delphi IDE. Once the device is linked in you will be able to edit your form visually in the IDE and instantly see how the form will look on the linked device. I’m pretty sure they use AppTethering for the live preview. I tried it with an Android device and it is pretty awesome to instantly see your design changes on the device.

There are all new sync and async message dialogs in the form of ShowMessageAsync(), ShowMessageSync(), MessageDialogAsync(), MessageDialogSync(), InputQueryAsync(), and InputQuerySync().

SQLite support has been upgraded to 3.9.2 and there is a new SQLite library for OSX which supports encryption. I believe this brings encryption support in the SQLite implementation to all four platforms (Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows) now.

The REST client library, the Amazon API, and the Azure API have all been enhanced in this version. BreaconFence has also been enhanced and now supports Eddystone Beacons. There is Windows 10 support for Bluetooth LE and Beacons. There are quite a few other enhancements to the Bluetooth support as well. AppAnalytics now defaults to HTTPS and AppTethering supports IPv6 plus other enhancements. Android service support has also been enhanced.

TZipFile, TStringList, and TMemIniFile have all been enhanced with new functionality. Regular expressions and StringReplace performance has been enhanced. THTTPClient has enhanced with asynchronous support and two new timeouts. Generics compile times have been greatly reduced.

IOS and Android support received improved dynamic array functionality and CPU Views while debugging. For IOS64 there is enhanced debugging support of Unicode, strings, arrays, breakpoints, and more.

The Java2OP tool which converts Java header files into Object Pascal header files has been enhanced to support JDK 8. With this new Berlin release there is also a second tool called SdkTransform which is suppose to convert Objective-C or C++ headers to Object Pascal headers. If it works decent enough this can greatly reduce the time it takes to add support for various IOS frameworks to your Firemonkey projects.

Lastly, there are a number of IoT device profiles and demos available via GetIt. These devices are things like heart monitors, smart plugs, smart locks, smart light switches, smart locks, smart sensors, step trackers, and many more which you can now easily interface with using Delphi. The Embarcadero term for the device interfaces is ThingConnect and it also interfaces with their EMS offering. These devices can be connected to via Bluetooth and Z-Wave. You can also use a generic implementation of ThingConnect to connect to devices that do not have a custom interface available through GetIt yet. There are 52 ThingConnect devices listed in GetIt at launch.

Head over to Embarcadero’s website to get the full run down of all of the new features and functionality available in Delphi 10.1 Berlin Firemonkey on Android, IOS, Windows, and OSX. The release notes for are also available.

The huge list of fixes for Firemonkey in Delphi 10.1 Berlin which is now available from Embarcadero. There is a pretty impressive list of fixes, upgrades, and enhancements in this latest version. The fixes cover the Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows platforms. I’m pretty sure there are even more fixes (627+) in this version than the last release which is impressive. Fixes for C++Builder are also listed on the full fix list. I’ve highlighting all of the Firemonkey fixes specifically down below.

• [FMX] TStringGrid BeginUpdate/EndUpdate does not count in Threaded Grid – Update
• [FMX] An App with a second form, with a TabControl is slow in switching tab (when having some edit components) the first time
• [FMX] TEdit width in a TTabControl not correct loaded
• [FMX] Custom style regression from XE8
• [FMX] LanguageDesigner: cannot enter any translations
• [FMX] Typo in method name
• [FMX] FMX: Images in TImageColumn are drawn blurry
• [FMX] Adding TLocationSensor to Android Service leads to Segmentation fault at service startup
• [FMX] FMX: App crashes with Images in Menus and use of GlobalUseDirect2D
• [FMX] TWebBrowser firemonkey control on win32 failes when it is created on a frame
• [FMX] IHintReceiver and IHintRegistry have the same GUID
• [FMX] AV under iOS if using Actions in Multi Form Project
• [FMX] TGrid Date column is not updated & incorrectly drawn
• [FMX] TApplicationEvent.EnteredBackground does not fire in iOS9 (Simulator)
• [FMX] Delphi Firemonkey DX Seattle TTabControl not reprinting correctly when inside a TVertScrollBox
• [FMX] The phone vibrates when you create a notification (EnableSound := False)
• [FMX] Loading a style in a TStyleBook does not get saved when form unit is closed
• [FMX] Getting a $C0000005 exception on FireDAC.DatS at Frefs.RemRef line
• [FMX] TWebBrowser causes EOleException
• [FMX] Scheduled notifications make app crash on Android devices with vibration
• [FMX] Bad style of TMenuItem with images (MacOS)
• [FMX] Open an FMX Frame First is causing a Access Violation
• [FMX] TComboTrackBar does not display the right value when only 1 decimal is set
• [FMX] Memory Leaks when using TStyleBook.Filename property
• [FMX] Loading a style file in the FMX Style Designer does not set the “Modified” flag
• [FMX] Accelerator Keys not working as documented in Firemonkey (Delphi)
• [FMX] Painting issue of the styled controls when position X/Y is not a whole number
• [FMX] Application main form deactivates
• [FMX] TTabControl slide animations are jerky
• [FMX] Firemonkey TOpenDialog destroys the 3d graphics under OSX
• [FMX] TComboBox inconsistent draw
• [FMX] MacOs 10.11 El Capitan: No entries in Project-Menu (Quit/Services)
• [FMX] Scroll is very slow and crash the program
• [FMX] [OSX] TCameraComponent may cause AV when app is closing
• [FMX] Animation doesn’t start if a frame is created at run time
• [FMX] TTextLayoutNG.PositionAtPoint returns incorrect values for vertically aligned text
• [FMX] GobalUseGPU Canvas set to false causes font to be rendered incorrectly.
• [FMX] TListView Styles, missing selected and header row background color
• [FMX] TGrid control automatically formatting dates outside of my control
• [FMX] Some emoji symbols are rendered incorrectly on iOS
• [FMX] TCustomMemo.SetData should handle empty TValue
• [FMX] changetabaction in action list produce access violation while changing active tab item
• [FMX] Form Sizing – Client Height – Personal Hotspot Enabled
• [FMX] TGrid + Livebindings scrolling performance
• [FMX] [MacOS] Major artifacts when painting focused controls in OS X
• [FMX] LongTap event fires before TStringGrid.Selected is being assigned
• [FMX] [TWebBrowser][Android] App will crash if explicitly free form with the component.
• [FMX] Memory leaks in TStyleStreaming.SaveToIndexedStream
• [FMX] TGrid OnCreateCustomEditor is not fired anymore
• [FMX] Drag and drop in TTreeViewItem does not work
• [FMX] TGrid shows empty when Options ColLines and RowLines are false
• [FMX] Zip actions and sensors on IOS
• [FMX] [Android] TWebBrowser shows Baidu maps mostly disfunctional
• [FMX] TColumn.DoCreateCustomEditor is no longer working
• [FMX] [FMX] TEdit: Caret positioning after removing part of the text
• [FMX] [FMX] TMemo loses chars when MaxLength is set
• [FMX] [StyleDesigner] renders badly nested custom controls
• [FMX] Default button-style for donetoolbutton on Android: icon and text overlap each other
• [FMX] Delphi 10 Seattle – input special unicode Chinese character in TEdit, app will unexpectedly quit
• [FMX] TTreeViewItem, TListBoxItem, TMenuItem, TListViewItem hint is never shown
• [FMX] StyleBook editor error when using multi paste option
• [FMX] Transparent image is not transparent
• [FMX] TWebBrowser crash if parent is a frame or border style of form is none
• [FMX] Application.ProcessMessages behavior under OSX
• [FMX] TCanvas.Drawline draws nothing on iOS if line is short
• [FMX] TNotificationCenter.Supported is missed in Seattle
• [FMX] TOpenDialog and AllowMultiSelect: bad name stored in Files TStrings.
• [FMX] Dynamically create Labels to FramedScroll Box
• [FMX] [TStyleBook] A new style is applied to all controls at runtime only if TStyleBook is set after the form is shown
• [FMX] [iOS] Interactive Gesture of control on form become invalid when form.transparency:= True.
• [FMX] Under iOS, a call to ‘MessageDlg’ when exiting a ‘TEdit’ component with virtual keyboard showing will result in
• the non-hiding of the virtual keyboard.
• [FMX] When scroll or pan, show error “Invalid class typecast”.
• [FMX] Memory leak in FMX.Styles.pas
• [FMX] TPopup Animation not working
• [FMX] SwipeTransitionEffect on Mobile, not working
• [FMX] IOS WillBecomeInactive TApplicationEvent not trigger
• [FMX] IFMXTakenImageService on IOS does not return Image
• [FMX] Segmentation Fault in TFMXTextListener on Android with Galaxy Tab
• [FMX] SQLite fails if CoreLocation is linked to the binary
• [FMX] Memory Leak in TStyleBook
• [FMX] For component on tabcontrol page, set align to client will not work.
• [FMX] Can not change affectation of a TFloatAnimation to différents controls
• [FMX] Bug in FMX.Printer raises EAbstractError, implementation missing
• [FMX] Access violation in TViewport3D after deleting TControl3D 3D object children
• [FMX] TGlyph not working on Android 4.x
• [FMX] TWebBrowser raises an exception on Android in debug mode.
• [FMX] Wrong values used for SetBounds in ApplyStyleLookup
• [FMX] Cannot update fixedheight in object impector
• [FMX] GetPropList with TRectangle returs StrokeThickness as property which should be part of Stroke (tkClass) property
• [FMX] Cannot delete folder of last used FMX project
• [FMX] [FMX]On Win Platform TLable AutoSize has wrong effect with smoe Char
• [FMX] New columns can only be created as long as no style is assigned to the grid
• [FMX] TMemo End key does not work correctly
• [FMX] Last deleted record in empty dataset still visible in StringGrid
• [FMX] Performance benchmark for TGrid and TStringGrid
• [FMX] Firemonkey TOpenDialog messes up graphics and is unstable under OSX
• [FMX] TEdit Cursorposition after deleting a marked text
• [FMX] [TMediaPlayer][MacOS] TMediaPlayer Play function causes major memory leak
• [FMX] [TMediaPlayer][Android] Error in TMediaPlayer when video play cyclically
• [FMX] When surrogate pair char (some emoji) in TEdit.Text , a cursor move strange.
• [FMX] Access violation when using TTreeview on Windows
• [FMX] System.NetEncoding TBase64Encoding range check error
• [FMX] [iOS device] TEdit/TMemo inserts 10 spaces(blank) when inputting string via Voice
• [FMX] Runtime creation of forms in Android
• [FMX] TGrid with CheckColumn linked to TFDQuery BooleanField does not show checkbox
• [FMX] Can’t close when menu opened.
• [FMX] [iOS] InteractiveGestures is not working when setting BorderStyle of form to bsNone
• [FMX] AddObject is too slow
• [FMX] TMenuItem.InsertObject does not work
• [FMX] Tpopup / Tpopupbox are broken after application resume on Android

Head over and check out the full list of fixes in Delphi 10.1 Berlin over on the Embarcadero Developer Network site.

Developer Alexander Sviridenkov has upgraded his HTML component libraries to fully support Delphi 10 Berlin. This is one of the first third party libraries that came out with Delphi 10 Berlin support so you know the developer is committed to updates. The library consists of an HTML Component Library, an HTML Report Library, and an HTML Editor Library. The components are written in Object Pascal and do not use WebView or any other plugins or third party controls. The library contains an HTML parser, an XML parser, a CSS parser, DOM classes with JQuery support, SVG rendering, HTTP/HTTPS clients, and an HTML rendering engine. The HTML rendering engine can render to the FMX canvas on IOS, OSX, and Windows and a native Android canvas on Android. It also supports Right-To-Left languages so you can implement a Right-To-Left language display with Firemonkey using this library. The HTML Editor Library side of the components support Windows and OSX. The HTML Component Library components support Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. HTML 4.1 and CSS 3 tags are supported plus some HTML5 tags. All of these libraries are commercial libraries with single developer and site licenses available. Demos are available. There are so many features in these libraries you really have to check them out for yourself to see them all. The libraries should support probably C++Builder as well.

Head over and check out all of the features of the HTML Library for yourself before downloading the demos.

Embarcadero has released the free Firemonkey premium style pack for Delphi 10 Berlin (probably supports C++Builder). The Style Designer itself has also been upgraded in this version. This new Delphi 10 style premium pack has 11 styles with the newest style called Copper Dark. The premium styles support all four platforms (Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows). You can use the same look and feel for your app across all platforms solidifying your unique brand look and feel. The 11 styles are Copper, Copper Dark, Coral Crystal, Coral Dark, Diamond, Emerald Crystal, Emerald Dark, Jet, Radiant, Sterling, and Vapor. Some styles have a semi transparent glass look and are meant to be used on a Form with a background color or image. Drop a new TStyleBook component on your form and then set the TForm.StyleBook property to your TStyleBook component. Double click the TStyleCollection field and then add a new default TStyleCollectionItem. Double click the TStyleCollectionItem.Resource field to load the Style Designer. Add each platform to the Platform drop down in the Style Designer. Select each platform and then Open your premium style of choice for that platform. Save/Apply the style when you close it. Now you should be able to see the new Styles on each Platform preview of the form.

Head over and download the free premium styles for Firemonkey in Delphi 10 Berlin from Embarcadero CodeCentral.

Artificial Intelligence is all the rage and thanks to the third party component system in Delphi you can dive right in with a suite of components called Intelligence Lab from Mitov Software. You can do all kinds of fun things with neural networks like generate unique baby names, feed them romance novels, colorize black and white photos, and build chat bots. These components have been upgraded to support Delphi Berlin plus they work across Android and Windows with some form of support for IOS and OSX. The component suite consists of components with everything from classifiers, to converters, to filters, to generators, to timing components, to training components. Examples of the components are two neural network components with Backprop and RProp algorithms, a naive Bayesian classifier, and a Radial Basis Function Network component. These components could be used to build OCR applications, computer vision functionality, SPAM filters, AI, speech recognition, and decision making functionality. These components are free to download and use for non commercial use but for commercial uses there is a license fee. The included demos are a K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) demo which demonstrates a machine learning algorithm for classifying objects. A Neural Network demo which demonstrates a neural network classifier. A Self-Organizing Map demo which demonstrates a type of neural network that uses unsupervised learning. A naive Bayes demo which demonstrates a Naive Bayes classifier. And a Face Recognition Demo which demonstrates training a Radial Basis Function Network to recognize faces, and then performing the actual recognition. These components should work with C++Builder as well.

Head over to Mitov Software to find out more about Intelligence Lab and then download the component suite!

Delphi 10 Berlin includes a new tool called SdkTransform which generates Object Pascal header files for IOS and OSX frameworks. The tool is command line based. HOSOKAWA Jun, a Delphi developer out of Japan, has created a Windows GUI front end in Firemonkey for SdkTransform which makes it as simple as selecting where you want to output the Objective-C Bridge files and then clicking one button to generate them all. The source code for the SDK Transform Assistant app is available on Github. I downloaded the source and compiled it under Delphi 10 Berlin. If you installed Delphi Berlin from ISO it should automatically detect the location of CLang. If you installed using the new GetIt installer you will have to set the CLang path manually. On my machine Windows 8.1 the CLang path ended up being “C:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\18.0\CatalogRepository\AndroidNDK-9c_x86_GIB.Build.22858.6822\toolchains\llvm-3.3\prebuilt\windows\lib\clang\3.3\include”. Once the paths are setup correctly and you set an output path just click start and it will generate all of the Object Pascal files. One thing to note is that you have to add the IOS and OSX frameworks that you want generated to the Delphi SDK Manager prior to generating the bridge files. Otherwise you will just get the default frameworks. Here is an excerpt created for the IOS Security framework:

const
libSecurity = ‘/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Security’;
function CF_ENUM(param1: SSLCipherSuite): Integer; cdecl;
external libSecurity name _PU + ‘CF_ENUM’;
function SecAccessControlGetTypeID: CFTypeID; cdecl;
external libSecurity name _PU + ‘SecAccessControlGetTypeID’;
function SecAccessControlCreateWithFlags(allocator: CFAllocatorRef;
protection: CFTypeRef; flags: SecAccessControlCreateFlags; error: Pointer)
: SecAccessControlRef; cdecl;
external libSecurity name _PU + ‘SecAccessControlCreateWithFlags’;

There is also an SDKTransformTypes.txt file in the Delphi Berlin bin directory which shows how SDKTransform will map the types from Objective-C to Object Pascal. Here is the complete types map list:

char=Byte
char*=MarshaledAString
short=SmallInt
short*=PSmallInt
int=Integer
int*=PInteger
long=LongInt
long*=PLongInt
float=Single
float*=PSingle
double=Double
double*=PDouble
long long=Int64
long long*=PInt64

unsigned.OSX=Cardinal
unsigned*.OSX=PCardinal
unsigned.IOS=LongWord
unsigned*.OSX=PLongWord
unsigned char=Byte
unsigned char*=PByte
unsigned char**=PByte
unsigned short=Word
unsigned int=Cardinal
unsigned int*=PCardinal
unsigned long=LongWord
unsigned long*=PLongWord
unsigned long long=UInt64
unsigned long long*=PUInt64
size_t=LongWord
size_t*=PLongWord

BOOL=Boolean
BOOL*=PBoolean
bool=Boolean

uint8_t=Byte
uint8_t*=PByte
uint8_t**=PByte
uint16_t=Word
uint16_t*=PWord
uint32_t=LongWord
uint32_t*=PLongWord
uint64_t=UInt64

__uint32_t.OSX=Cardinal
__uint32_t.IOS=LongWord

int8_t=Int8
int16_t=Int16
int32_t=Int32
int32_t*=PInt32
int64_t=Int64

UInt8=Byte
UInt16=UInt16
UInt32=UInt32
UInt64=UInt64
SInt8=Int8
SInt16=Int16
SInt32=Int32
SInt64=Int64

Float32=Single
Float64=Double
id=Pointer
id*=Pointer
void=Pointer
void*=Pointer
CGFloat*=PCGFloat

ptrdiff_t=Integer
Class=Pointer
Protocol=Pointer
Protocol*=Pointer
AppleEvent*=Pointer
GLint*=PGLint
NSGlyph*=PNSGlyph
NSGlyphInscription*=PNSGlyphInscription
NSOpenGLPixelFormatAttribute*=PNSOpenGLPixelFormatAttribute
NSPropertyListFormat*=PNSPropertyListFormat
NSRange*=PNSRange
NSRangePointer=PNSRange
NSStringEncoding*=PNSStringEncoding
NSTIFFCompression*=PNSTIFFCompression
NSTIFFCompression**=PNSTIFFCompression
NSZone*=Pointer

_Bool=Integer
_Bool*=PInteger
boolean_t=Integer
boolean_t*=PInteger
off_t=Integer
va_list=array of const
instancetype=Pointer {instancetype}
acl_t=Pointer {acl_t}
uid_t=Pointer {uid_t}
gid_t=Pointer {gid_t}
pid_t=Pointer {pid_t}
mode_t=Pointer {mode_t}
dispatch_source_t=Pointer {dispatch_source_t}
dispatch_block_t=Pointer {dispatch_block_t}
float_t=Single {float_t}
ssize_t=Integer
socklen_t=LongWord
Fixed=Integer
Fract=Integer
UnsignedFixed=LongWord
ShortFixed=SmallInt

HOSOKAWA Jun has a more extensive blog post (in Japanese) about SDKTransform, the CLang directory structure, and SDK Transform Assistant in a blog post. You can use the translate function in Chrome if needed. If you need to translate Java headers for Android try Java2OP.

Head over and read the full blog post about SDKTransform and then download the source code for the SDKTransform Assistant.

There are quite a few Firemonkey component sets available for Delphi Berlin which can get you ahead of the game when developing for Android and IOS. Think of component developers as another part of your team: they do the foundation work for you so you can focus on the actual functionality. Here are thirteen of these component set developers which give you access to everything from FFMPEG video playback to amazing grid capabilities to in app payments to cross platform math libraries to artificial intelligence libraries to scripting components to database access components to native maps to bar code reading and even enhanced camera functionality. Achieving success through third party components is a powerful developer force multiplier.

Alexander Sviridenkov provides the HTML Component Library which contains an HTML Component Library, an HTML Report Library, and an HTML Editor Library. The components are written in Object Pascal and do not use WebView or any other plugins or third party controls. The library contains an HTML parser, an XML parser, a CSS parser, DOM classes with JQuery support, SVG rendering, HTTP/HTTPS clients, and an HTML rendering engine.

Devart provides enterprise grade universal data access component suite called UniDAC. This is an amazing data access component suite which provides direct database access from Android, IOS, Windows, and Mac for a variety of databases. It is possible to connect to Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite without using a client library with these components. They also have a SecureBridge offering which provides SSH, SSL, and SFTP components for Firemonkey in Delphi Berlin.

Dew Research provides MtxVec which is an object oriented numerical library for mathematical, signal processing and statistical functionality. On Windows machines it leverages mathematical, signal processing and statistical SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.2 and Intel AVX 1.0 and AVX 2.0 instruction sets. The add ones for MtxVec are DSP Master which is the advanced signal processing package, Stats Master which is the statistical package, and Data Miner which are the artificial intelligence enabling components.

Flash AV Software Corp. provides professional components based on the FFMPEG library and they have a huge number of features. If you are doing video playback professionally on Android and IOS this is the component set to have. They have FFMPEG wrappers for Android, IOS, Windows, and OSX but their components are separated by platform. It features H264 Hardware Decoder playback on some devices devices and support both ARMV7 and ARMV7S CPUs. The formats it supports are all formats supported by FFMPEG and in addition it can play videos from memory stream, HTTP, HTTPS, RTMP, and MMS.

JVESoft provides the JVESoft Components Suite which is a large set of components which are vary useful for any developer releasing professional consumer level apps on Google Play and the Apple App Store. The suite comes with a large number of third party ad component integrations, analytics, in app purchases, push notifications, simplified setting storage and social login components.

Mitov Software provides quite a few components but for Firemonkey in Delphi Berlin they offer IntelligenceLab, AnimationLab, and LogicLab. IntelligenceLab consists of components with everything from classifiers, to converters, to filters, to generators, to timing components, to training components. These components could be used to build OCR applications, computer vision functionality, SPAM filters, AI, speech recognition, and decision making functionality. AnimationLab comes with three different components which are ALTimeline which allows you to manipulate components and their properties based on a timeline, ALMass which allows you to apply mass effects to Firemonkey 3D components, and ALDrag which allows you to apply drag effects. LogicLab allows you to simulate and display logic conditions using tools like logic operators, segment decoders, binary encoding & decoding, ALU & magnitude comparer, and more.

RiversoftAVG provides a number of component sets including SVG Component Library, Charting Component Suite, Genetic Algorithms, Fuzzy Logic, and Inference Engine Component Libraries.  The SVG Component Library allows you to Load, Edit and Save SVGs as SVG and Delphi Binary. Vector graphics are drawn at runtime which allows them to appear smooth regardless of the resolution and DPI of the device. The Charting Component Suite has over 19 different chart types which include area, arrow, pie, line shape, bubble, donut, candlestick, and graph to name a few. The Genetic Algorithms set is a powerful genetic algorithms and genetic programming solution. The Fuzzy Logic set has 29 different fuzzy hedges like addition, about, not, very, normalize, and many more. It does fuzzy correlation and inference. Finally, the Inference Engine is a powerful set of components which implement rule based intelligence and fuzzy logic.

Steema provides TeeChart Pro which is a charting component library that offers hundreds of Graph styles in 2D and 3D for data visualization, 56 mathematical, statistical and financial Functions for you to choose from together with an unlimited number of axes and 30 Palette components. Additionally, they have the Steema Business Intelligence component set which is open source and in active development. The SteeBI project is a component set to provide an effective way for specialists and analysts to turn data into meaningful visualizations and reports.

TMS Software provides a massive number of Firemonkey interface and data exchange components. They include TMS Charts, TMS Cloud Pack, TMS FNC Chart, TMS FNC UI Pack, TMS Filters, TMS FlexCel, TMS Pack, TMS WebGMaps, TMS WebOSMaps, TMS iCL, and TMS mCL all for Firemonkey. There are all kinds of buttons, HTML components, charts, gauges, web browsers, maps, native controls, Excel components, cloud connections, and much much more. All of the Firemonkey components can be licensed as one giant Firemonkey Component Studio or each set can be licensed separately. Additionally, they provide a set of business components with ORM, scripting, workflow, REST/JSON libs, data replication, and data modeling functionality.

VIRT Laboratory’s paxCompiler provides an amazing set of Object Pascal, Basic, and Javascript scripting components. It is an embeddable compiler and interpreter engine that allows you to import the interface sections from your Delphi Berlin units and access the rest of your code from the interpreted script itself. You can access the main form of your application from the interpreted script for example. It also supports compiling executables on Windows and evaluating script at runtime. If you’re building any kind of scripting into your apps be sure to take a look.

WinSoft provides a huge number of individual components and library wrappers for accessing various devices like bar code recognition readers, the device cameras, COM ports, JDBC, DirectX Joystick, JSON files, CSV files, NFC, PDF, HID USB, and many more. Check each individual component for it’s device compatibility because they all vary across Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. You can also get all of the components in one giant Winsoft Component Package.

Woll2Woll provides a versatile grid component suite called FirePower for all the Firemonkey platforms in Delphi Berlin which are Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. It allows you to embed controls like buttons and images into the grid. It supports multiple columns and you can multiple select columns as well. It has seamless filtering and allows you to use in memory information from FireDAC and TClientDataSet. Records or cells can have custom fonts or custom colors for even more flexibility.

There are many more free and commercial Firemonkey components out there from other developers and vendors that we weren’t able to cover in this article.

Check out our other Firemonkey posts to find out more about them!

All of the big tech companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft seem to be building bots these days with Alexa (Amazon Echo), Cortana (Windows 10), Siri, Viv, Facebook Messenger bots, and Google Home. You can get in on the chat bot building frenzy with Firemonkey in Delphi Berlin using an upgraded version of PascAlice. Kim Sullivan created PascAlice as a free AIML interpreter for Delphi awhile ago. AIML stands for Artificial Intelligence Markup Language and it is an XML representation of a chat bot dialog tree. The AIML parser works offline so you can embed it on a device and it will work just fine without internet access. One reason for the rise of bots is the market saturation of apps in the various app stores. A recent VentureBeat article lists 10 ways bots are being integrated into business:

1. Improve customer service
2. Facilitate ecommerce
3. Provide better, more personal engagement
4. Enhance customers’ experience
5. Address customers’ needs in real-time
6. Integrate utility into the brand experience
7. Have conversation at scale
8. Talk openly and honestly, even about sensitive topics
9. Create opportunities for services integration
10. Improve customer loyalty programs

A number of AIML files like Knowledge.aiml have been embedded into the bot already from the AliceBot.org site to give it a little bit of brains (try asking it “how far is alpha centauri”). The parser takes in chat input and then runs it through the various AIML file it loads. I worked with a developer in Belarus via UpWork to upgrade PascAlice to that it supports Firemonkey in Delphi Berlin on Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows. We brought in the source code from this demo for the chat interface and upgraded it a bit with new virtual keyboard handling code. We replaced LibXmlParser with the cross platform OXml library. I wanted to implement some text to speech functionality so on Windows, IOS, and OSX it utilizes an unofficial Google Translate API but also supports a Voice RSS API for text to speech(TTS). The API based TTS works by just passing a translation URL to the TMediaPlayer component. On Android it utilizes the built in text to speech functionality using a component built by Delphi developers Jim McKeeth and Jeff Overcash.

Two other pieces of functionality that have been added to the bot are the ability to say “google delphi” or “google firemonkey” and it will open in an in app TWebBrowser. The bot for example could have functionality that opens the web browser based on various chat responses. The second piece of functionality that was added is a dynamic form response very similar to how the Facebook Messenger Bot works where it embeds a piece of content in the chat response. The dynamic form is built via JSON and you can test out the functionality by pressing the Inline Form button to see it in action. It will create a TFrame on the fly and then populate it with buttons from the JSON that is passed to it. In this case there are two lines with a Yes and No button. If the Yes button is pressed it will send a navigation to the TWebBrowser as well. The dynamic form functionality is pretty powerful and only a small amount of functionality is built into the demo. The dynamic from can also be saved and loaded from JSON using the Duck Duck Delphi library. Keep in mind this is a quick prototype with limited testing.

You can also connect the chat bot to a variety of REST APIs like Motion.ai, Api.AI, PandoraBots, or even Amazon Echo using TRESTClient if needed. Alternately, you can run your own AIML server with Program O for PHP. Or you could pull out the AIML parser and deploy it in your own Delphi server implementation. Who’s going to be the first developer to turn the Delphi documentation into a chat bot? Let us know in the comments how you use it!

Update: Fixed a small cross platform issue.

Download the PascAlice FMX AIML Parsing Chat Bot For Firemonkey In Delphi Berlin On Android, IOS, OSX, and Windows!