Delphi Component Design [Paperback]

Danny Thorpe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1996

In this work, users are shown how to pick the right roots for components, how to determine what components must do and how extensible they must be. The book explores the options for design-time property and component editors and experts. The companion CD-ROM contains all the code in the book.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"Well written, provides good coverage of the subject matter, and the author obviously knows Delphi inside-out."
Eamon O'Tuathail
Clipcode Software Reports

"I recommend this book very highly. Delphi Component Design has the feel of a classic that will become required reading."
Sylvia Lutnes
The Delphi Deli

"... a clearly-written, well organized, approachable yet technically complete treatment of Delphi component development. It's a marvelous book and I recommend it without reservation."
Jerry Coffey, Editor-in-Chief
Delphi Informant
February 1997

Delphi Component Design tells the inside story of how and why Delphi was built, and how to make use of this information to build better Delphi components and applications. Whether you're a Delphi application writer yearning to expand into component writing, or you're an experienced Delphi component writer in pursuit of the smaller, faster, better Holy Grail, Delphi Component Design will help you sort out what Delphi Visual Component Library (VCL) services can do for you (and how they do it); what your components can do for VCL; what standard behaviors your component classes must implement; and how to take advantage of little-known VCL classes and services to dramatically improve your component's ease-of-use, code reuse, flexibility, and performance.

Delphi Component Design's three major sections mirror the phases of component creation -- Analysis and Design, Implementation Details, and Design-Time Tools. Part 1, Analysis and Design, reviews the critical steps of component design, including object decomposition analysis, component aggregation, implementation abstraction techniques, and extensibility issues. Part 2, Implementation Details, examines the nitty-gritty specifics of Delphi's most powerful and most mysterious subsystems (including polymorphism, exceptions, component streaming, messaging, graphics, OLE, and more) in complete detail, so that your components can take maximum advantage of Delphi's built-in services. Part 3, Design-Time Tools, shows you how to write property and component editors to make building applications with your most complex components a snap, and how to build experts and add-in tools to seamlessly merge your own development tools and helper apps into the Delphi development environment.

This is the no-stone-unturned authority on building advanced Delphi components, from high-level views of how a component fits into the grand scheme of things down to the minute details of how each link between a component and the rest of the system works, from design-time support tools to run-time performance optimizations.

Danny Thorpe is an R&D engineer on Borland's Delphi development team. He has served as technical editor and advisor for dozens of Delphi programming books and written articles for PC Magazine and Dr. Dobb's Journal.

0201461366B04062001

About the Author

Danny Thorpe is an R&D engineer on Borland's Delphi development team. He has served as technical editor and advisor for dozens of Delphi programming books and written articles for PC Magazine and Dr. Dobb's Journal.

0201461366AB04062001

Product Details

• Paperback: 348 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley (C) (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201461366
• ISBN-13: 978-0201461367
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #915,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Borland Delphi

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Delphi book I have seen!, March 21, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Delphi Component Design (Paperback)

Delphi Component Design, is by far the best Delphi book, I have seen. I have all of the Borland Press Books, as well as several(10+) other Delphi books. All of these books have there strong points but nothing compares to this Book! It covers RTTI, and Code Optimization better than any other book. To sum it up, this book starts were the other books left off.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most valueable Delphi resource on the planet, November 30, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Karachi Pakistan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Delphi Component Design (Paperback)

This book is all about what goes behind the curtains. If are a crazy developer like me and interested in knowing how Delphi designers implemented different mechanisms such as WIndows messaging OLE COM this title is a must

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for VCL Architecture, February 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Delphi Component Design (Paperback)

A book in search for two years. Back to 1995 when I started to dive into VCL source code. A question popped into my mind that why Borland did not document the architecture of VCL ? I had read numerous books. Delphi Component Design is it. You can not read VCL source code without it. It saved me tons of hours.