A small collection of VCL components for Delphi XE2 - 10.2 Tokyo
JPPack is a small collection of VCL components for Delphi.
Supported Delphi versions: XE2, XE3, XE4, XE5, XE6, XE7, XE8, 10.0 Seattle, 10.1 Berlin, 10.2 Tokyo.
These components were created within a few years, they were repeatedly modified, improved, and extended with the functions needed in the implementation of specific projects. Generally, there is a small chaos, but I think everything works OK (I hope!).
I am no expert on writing VCL components and helped myself by analyzing the source codes (and using fragments) of various free Delphi components, especially Cindy Components and PngComponents.
Some of the functions and procedures related to graphics processing were taken from the Cindy Components. The gradient related routines were almost entirely taken from this package (VCL.cyGraphics.pas file).
The author of the Cindy Components is Júlio Maurício Antunes Piao. The sources are available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/tcycomponents/
In the source files in which I use functions written by Júlio, I have added relevant information with a link to his page.
After long and fierce battles with various buttons from different packages of components for Delphi (commercial and free), I finally found ones that displays the PNG files correctly - TPngBitBtn and TPngSpeedButton from the PngComponents package. I have never had problems with them, unlike many, many others. For this reason, in the implementation of my buttons I decided to rely on the code from this package.
The original author of the PngComponents package is Martijn Saly (www.thany.org). The project is currently maintained by Uwe Raabe. Sources are available at https://bitbucket.org/uweraabe/pngcomponents
In the folder 3rd-party you can find the ZIP file with the PngComponents ver. 1.4.1. This is the latest version of the PngComponents available when writing this document and it works fine with the JPPack.
A highly customizable panel. TCustomPanel descendant.
It was written on the basis of one of the panels included in the Cindy Components package (but I do not remember exactly which one).
The panel is divided into two parts - upper and lower. For each of them you can define colors (gradient or solid) separately.
All panel borders are configured separately. You can set different color, thickness, style, visibility for each border.
The panel has a built-in support for the unlimited collection of captions. Each caption has its own property Font: TFont, and can be centered or positioned relative to the corners of the panel.
Moreover, the TJppPanel has a built-in support for the unlimited collection of horizontal lines, vertical lines and horizontal bars.
A truncated version of the TJppPanel. It does not have built-in collections of captions, vertical lines, horizontal lines, and horizontal bars.
TJppPngButton is an extended TPngBitBtn button from the PngComponents package.
The button can be in one of five states: normal, hot, down (pressed), focused and disabled. For each state you can set a whole range of display parameters: upper and bottom gradient/solid color (similarly to TJppPanel), border color, style and width, font parameters (color, name, size, style).
If you want the button to be displayed in system colors, set property Appearance.DefaultDrawing to True (all custom colors defined in the Appearance.<STATES> will then be ignored).
The number of all colors for all button states is really big, so I decided to make it easier to manage the displayed colors using ready-to-use color schemes (color maps).
I have created 36 different color schemes for TJppPngButton. To change the active color scheme, select one of the schemes available in the ColorMapType property in the Object Inspector.
Color schemes can be edited with the TJppPngButton Color Maps Designer program, which is located in the repository in the demos directory.
This button is a slightly truncated version of the TJppPngButton. It has only one gradient for each button state and does not support color schemes.
This button is very similar to TJppBasicPngButton, but it is based on TGraphicControl, so it does not take the focus (it has no focused state).
A highly customizable ComboBox displaying a list of predefined and/or user-defined colors.
The TJppColorComboBox has 4 built-in components: one label and 3 buttons to change, copy and paste color.
Colors can be displayed in three formats: RGB Int (eg. 051,102,255), RGB Hex (eg. #3366FF), and BGR Hex (eg. $00FF6633). If you need to display the color in a different format, you can do this in the OnGetColorStrValue event handler.
In addition to standard items (displaying color) you can also add separators and ChangeColor items.
Each color selected by the user, but not yet in the color list, can be automatically added to the end or top of the list. Thanks to this the user of your application has access to the history of previously selected colors.
A highly customizable ListBox displaying a list of predefined and/or user-defined colors.
It is very similar to TJppColorComboBox, but it has no built-in components.
Label with additional fonts (TFont) for 5 states: normal, visited-normal, hot, visited-hot and disabled. It is inherited from TCustomLabel.
A standard TTimer component with a few additional properties and methods:
RepeatCountLimitproperty.
Here you can set how many times the time interval specified in theIntervalproperty can be reached. The value0means no limit.Counterproperty.
Each time the time interval specified in theIntervalproperty expires, theCounterproperty is incremented by 1. When theCounterreaches the value ofRepeatCountLimit, the timer is stopped and theOnRepeatCountLimitReachedevent handler is triggered (if assigned).ClearCounterOnStartproperty. If is set toTrue, then theStartmethod resets theCounter.Startmethod. SetsEnabledtoTrue. IfClearCounterOnStartis set toTruethen theStartsets theCounterproperty to0.Stopmethod. Sets theEnabledtoFalse.OnRepeatCountLimitReachedevent - fired when theCounterreaches the value ofRepeatCountLimit.
Example: Displaying the counter every one second. Display the message after 10 seconds and switch off of the Timer.
procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
begin
JppTimer1.Interval := 1000;
JppTimer1.RepeatCountLimit := 10; //JppTimer1 will stop automatically after 10 seconds.
JppTimer1.Start;
end;
procedure TForm1.JppTimer1Timer(Sender: TObject);
begin
Label1.Caption := JppTimer1.Counter.ToString;
end;
procedure TForm1.JppTimer1RepeatCountLimitReached(Sender: TObject);
begin
ShowMessage('10 seconds elapsed!');
end;TJppStorageCtrl is a non-visual component that allows you to store information of different types in the collection. Each item of the collection stores the following data:
- 4 String values,
- 2 Integer values,
- 2 Int64 values,
- 2 float values (Double),
- 2 Boolean values,
- 2 TColor values,
- 2 Byte values,
- 2 Pointer values.
Items are accesible from the Object Inspector using StorageCollection property.
The values of each item of the collection, except pointers, can also be set in the Object Inspector. Pointer values can only be set in the code and they are initialized by default to nil.
To acces the collection items in the code you can use the Items property, eg:
JppStorageCtrl.Items[0].IntValue1 := 1;
JppStorageCtrl.Items[0].PointerValue1 := SomePointer;But, since Items is set as the default property, you can write it simply:
JppStorageCtrl[0].IntValue1 := 1;
JppStorageCtrl[0].PointerValue1 := SomePointer;This component can be useful if you want to have access to some global data, and you do not want to create global variables.
I sometimes use this component in the early stages of writing applications. In later stages, a definitely better way to store and manage data is to design specialized records, classes, generic/pointer containers, etc.
Each component in the JPPack package has the TagExt property. Here you can store one integer value (IntValue), string (StrValue), float number (RealValue), pointer (PointerValue) and date (DateValue). The first three values are available from the Object Inspector and in the code, the last two - only in the code.
Default values:
| Property | Default value |
|---|---|
TagExt.IntValue |
0 |
TagExt.StrValue |
'' |
TagExt.RealValue |
0 |
TagExt.PointerValue |
nil |
TagExt.DateValue |
Now |
Before installing the JPPack package, you must first install 2 another packages:
- JPLib from https://github.com/jackdp/JPLib
- PngComponents from https://bitbucket.org/uweraabe/pngcomponents
You can use PngComponents ver. 1.4.1 package from the 3rd-party folder. I tested JPPack with this version and it looks like everything works OK.
In the packages folder you can find installation packages for all Delphi versions from XE2 to 10.2 Tokyo.
Go to the subfolder with the name of your Delphi version (eg Delphi_XE7 for XE7 version) and open the file JPPackVCL.dproj or JPPackVCL.dpk. In the Project Manager, right-click the JPPackVCL.bpl file, then select Install in the popup menu. After a short time, a message should appear displaying information about the correct installation of the package and with the list of newly installed components. All components you can find ont the JPPack page in the Tool Palette.
After installing the package, it is best to add the source folder to the library path:
- Select menu
Tools-->Options. - In the tree view on the left, go to
Environment Options-->Delphi Options-->Library. - In the Library path combo box (on the right), add
;(semicolon) and the path to thesourcedirectory.