CanTools Wizards

This is a set of wizards you can install in Delphi, either within an extra pull-down menu or as a submenu of the Tools menu). The wizards (freely available at www.marcocantu.com/cantoolsw) are unrelated and offer disparate features:

List Template Wizard  Streamlines the development of similar list-based classes, each with its own type of objects. This wizard is mentioned in Chapter 4. Because it does a search-and-replace operation on a base source file, it can be used any time you need repeated code and the name of a class (or other entity) varies.

OOP Form Wizard  (Mentioned in Chapter 4.) Allows you to hide the published components of a form, making your form more object-oriented and providing a better encapsulation mechanism. Start it when a form is active, and it will fill the OnCreate event handler. Then you must manually move part of the code into the unit initialization section.

Object Inspector Font Wizard  Lets you change the font of the Object Inspector (something particularly useful for presentations, because the Object Inspector's font is too small to be seen easily on a projection screen). Another option available in the settings dialog allows you to toggle an internal feature of the Object Inspector and display the font names (in the drop-down combo box for that property) using a specific font.

Rebuild Wizard  Allows you to rebuild all the Delphi projects in a given subfolder after loading each of them in sequence in the IDE. You can use this wizard to grab a series of projects (like those in a book) and open the one you are interested in by clicking on the list:

You can also automatically compile a given project or start a (slow) multiproject build: In the compiler results dialog, you click a button to proceed only if the corresponding environment option is set. If this environment option is not set, you won't see the compiler errors, because the compiler messages are superceded at every compilation.

Clip History Viewer  Keeps track of a list of text items you've copied to the Clipboard. A memo in the viewer's window shows the last 100 clipped lines. Editing the memo (and clicking Save) modifies this Clipboard history. If you keep Delphi open, the Clipboard will also get text from other programs (but only text, of course). I've seen occasional Clipboard-related error messages caused by this wizard.

VCL Hierarchy Wizard  Shows the (almost) complete hierarchy of the VCL, including third-party components you've installed, and allows you to search one class and see many details (base and subclasses, published properties, and so on). Clicking the button regenerates both the list and the tree (in sequence—hence the progress bar runs twice):

The list of classes is generated by using predefined core classes (some are still missing; feel free to send suggestions) and then adding each component of the installed packages (Delphi's, yours, third parties'…) along with the classes of all the published properties having a class type. However, classes used only as public properties are not included.

Extended Database Forms Wizard  Does much more than the Database Forms Wizard available in the Delphi IDE, allowing you to choose the fields to place on a form and also to use a dataset other than those based on the BDE.

Multiline Palette Manager  Allows you to turn Delphi's Component Palette into a TabControl with multiple lines of tabs: