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Title:

EKon 9 Technical Keynote

Author: Bob Swart
Posted: 9/28/2005 2:04:44 PM (GMT+1)
Content:

The Technical Keynote was done by Markus (from Borland Germany?), Jason Vokes and David I. Markus started by showing Together 2006, Jason then showed the new features in the DeXter IDE (using Delphi for Win32, but the same things would be available in .NET he told us), and finally David I showed some specific new features in the C++ personality of DeXter.

Markus only had 10 minutes to show Together 2006 (something usually done in 4 hours), so please forgive me if I didn't make any notes. What is interesting, is that some of the things we saw in those first 10 minutes, we also saw later re-appear in DeXter, since DeXter now contains "Together for Delphi" (as a feature).

Alignment HintsJason Vokes showed a number of IDE enhancements, both for the designer and the code editor. The designer now uses alignment hints, little thin lines (like laser beams) that will show the edges of your control (or controls) and how or where they line up with each other. It's now really easy to align controls neatly (without having to select them, right-click, do Align and remember to select the Horizontal or Vertical row and then the rigth alignment operation). Looks cool, and I'm sure it feels even better if you can try it for yourself.
The Code Editor shows a coloured vertical line in the gutter, which can be green or yellow. Green means new but saved text, while yellow means new and unsaved text. Anything without a vertical line is just old code that existed before this edit session. A little new feature, perhaps only for subconscious use, but I already like it.

Jason also showed a feature called Live Templates, including a very cool way where you'd start to type a case-statement, with a field of a certain enumerated type, and the code completion would automatically generate all possible enumeration values for you as case statements. Very cool. Perhaps not for Boolean, and certainly not for Integer, but useful for all those enumerated types that I always end up adding my own case statements for by hand.

Another new thing is called Live Source, where we can move from the source editor to the model view, and also see an object hierarchy (including properties and fields) of any classes in a unit. Using the designer area, we can then add new fields or make modifications, which are reflected in the source code as well. Looks cool, although I'm not sure I'd use that instead of the good old code editor, but time will tell.
The best thing is that we can also generate documentation from this design view, so if you're not using it to modify the classes, at least you can document them now ;-)

I also saw a Pattern Wizard, where you could add a design pattern (from a list of standard and GoF patterns). Looked really cool.

David IAs last speaker of the Technical Keynote, David I showed C++ in DeXter, including C++ Build Configurations (from C++BuilderX and C++Builder 2005), also the green and yellow lines in the editor, special pre- and post- build events where you can run a script (or an external app perhaps?), etc.

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2 Comments

AuthorPostedComments
Daniel Wischnewski05/09/28 17:01:37Hi Bob, yes Markus Hebach is from Borland Germany, EMEA Together ;-) Btw, first pictures are online: http://delphi-notes.blogspot.com/2005/09/world-premiere-dexter-ide-at-ekon-9.html
seo service 13/09/06 20:33:52d6uKOW I value the blog article. Will read on...


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