Change Log

Version 1.15

• Converted the library to dynamically locate and load the needed Palm DLLs. This means that the DLLs no longer need to be located on the system search path. Thanks to Frank Schmidberger for showing me how to it
• Fixed up some events that weren't being fired [Eric Cloninger]
• Added support for the Palm TimeType noTime constant

• Added a Delphi 7 project file, and set an .inc file which defines common constants, since both Delphi 6 and Delphi 7 share some alternate new units [Daniel Szasz]
• Added an IFDEF in pfgDbSave.pas to handle Delphi 4 not having all the TFieldType values that the later versions of Delphi 4 do [Jim & Leslie Thorne]
• Modified TpfgPalmSyncComponent.SetSetLocalAttribs - it was checking if FGetLocalAttribs rather than FSetLocalAttribs was assigned [boanerges]
• Removed the pfgLocalDb.pas file from the distribution (it was deprecated for some time)

• **NOTE**: Renamed the Delphi 5 package to have an explicit 'D5' suffix - it was causing confusion amongst some people
• Added some code to allow the creation of a Palm table image file on the local computer from a DataSet component, allowing for creation of database images outside of a HotSync session. Use the new overloaded version of ExportDatabaseToFile.
• Since saving a record moves it to the end of the table, the record numbering gets shifted up by one. So if you followed a t.Post call with t.Next, you would end up getting not the next record, but the one after. The component now flags when a record is saved, and if Next is called (with no active category filtering), then the record number isn't incremented.
• Fixed up the reading of the Palm's username from TpfgPalmSystemInfo.Username property - I didn't realise that the length field returned from SyncReadUserId includes the terminator Null byte [chuah]
• Removed a very ancient exception handling block from the PostRecord method that was using the Windows OutputDebugString, but also suppressing the exception. Also removed OutputDebugString try block from the LocalToRemoteRecord method
• Removed an old version of the EPalmSyncError exception class from the pfgPalmMisc.pas, as well as the support method GetSyncErrorStr, and the array of error strings
• Added the constants for SYNCERR_UNKNOWN and SYNCERR_READ_ONLY to the pfgPalmSyncError.pas TranslatePalmError method
• Added a call to HsRefreshConduitInfo in a try/except block in both the DllRegisterServer and DllUnRegisterServer methods. This means that in HotSync API versions that support it, you won't need to restart HotSync Manager to have the conduit appear/disappear from the conduit list after registration/deregistration. The Palm documentation says that this method is private, though, so I've wrapped it in a IFNDEF SAFE_CODE block - you can define a global define SAFE_CODE to stop the calls being included in your conduit, if you wish [Olrik Larsen]
• Added in the ability to delete any folders made by the conduit in any user subdirectories. To do this, a RemoveDirTree method has been added to pfgPalmMisc.pas, and an extra method RemoveConduitFolders has been added to pfgPalmComp.pas. [all by Olrik Larsen]
• Added in two events to the Palm component object - OnRegisterConduit and OnUnregisterConduit. The unregister event has a RemoveDirs parameter which you can set to indicate whether to try and remove any subdirectories created by the conduit. The default is True (to remove). Also added two public methods, DoRegisterConduit and DoUnregisterConduit, to act as an interface to them [Olrik Larsen]
• Added two extra buttons to the HotSync Action dialog, "Data Settings" and "About", with associated properties for display, and action events. [Olrik Larsen]
• Changed the THotSyncActionForm Action property to HSAction - it was clashing with the TControl.Action propertys [Olrik Larsen]
• Removed the automatic installation of the TpfgPalmLocalTable component - it's been deprecated for many releases, and still having it up on the Component Palette will only cause confusion.
• Fixed a minor glitch where random bytes could be introduced into unused space in a fixed length string field when writing out to a record. Now all unused bytes will be zeroed

• Modified the EmptyTable method to no longer use standard table open code if the table is currently closed. This saves processing time, since it no longer has to read in and parse the first record unnecessarily
• Added an icon for the TpfgUserManager class
• Added AddUser/Delete user methods to pfgUserManager.pas. Additionally, added in a new error class for handling errors that occur with the user manager, and a check method for checking the return values of these methods [Mert]. Use them in the following style:

          UserManagerCheck(myUserManager.AddUser('Test'));
          UserManagerCheck(myUserManager.DeleteUser('Test'));
  

• Added a new component for installing .prc files to the Palm [Mert]
• Added in the Double floating point type. Turns out the PC/Motorola types are identical (after byte reversal). Don't know why I had problems with my initial tests [Mert for confirming this]
• Added a SetDbFlags method to generate an error if the table is active. Some people didn't realise it was only to be used prior to creating a database, and where confused when changing the flags on an active database didn't have any effect.
• Added the facilty to dump a Palm database to a local file. This is done by manually creating a file according to the Palm Inc. specifications, since there is no existing API method to do it. There's a new table method, SaveToFile, for saving an open database to a file, using the component. The actual component I wrote, in pfgDbSave.pas, can both read and write PDB files, so I've also created a new example, PDBView, that lets you open up a PDB file and view it's contents. People may find it usefull in it's own right, when combined with this new facility to dump tables from the Palm. [help from Jean-Jacques Wacksman, Jim Cooper, and Ben Combee]
• Updated the documentation with the new functionalities, and cleaned up some minor mistakes in headings and typesetting
• Removed the compiled versions DLLs for the Address and Memo examples from the examples.zip subfile, reducing the size of the overall library
• Added a cast to Integer in RemoteRecordToLocal to properly convert negative 32-bit numbers to their correct representation [Olrik Larsen]

• Cleaned up some of the comments in the source files
• Fixed the GetFieldValue to return a floating point value for ptSingle field types [Herval Freire]
• Modified the writing of records to the Palm to be able to handle empty values in all the various field types. Previously, only the integer field types were being handled

• Added support for the Single and Int64 types. Can't support Doubles, because the format between Palm and PC seems to be different
• Fixed a bug in aligment control after variable length strings with the opStringsAlign option
• Fixed up some problems with the handling of the opStringsAlign option
• Fixed problems with the ptLong type. It now works as a 32-bit signed integer type
• Added support for Delphi 6. Note that I don't personally have a copy of Delphi 6, so the Delphi 6 support is tentative. Thanks go to jandjbull for providing the Delphi 6 package files, and noting the changes needed to support Delphi 6 (I added them in with version IFDEFS so the correct versions are used depending on which version of Delphi you have)s

• Fixed some spelling mistakes in the dialogs
• Updated the help documentation - the main index no longer says library version 1.3 :)
• Updated the readme.txt. I moved the previous notes to the end of the document. Hopefully, this will mean more people see the "Installation Instructions" section before they start e-mailling me questions. :)
• Added the TpfgPalmPollingThread class, a thread class for keeping the Palm connection active. Located in pfgPollingThread.pas
• Added a basic example for the synchronisation component [Per-Eric Larsson]
• One of the examples still used Delphi 5 textual forms. Resaved it to use binary .dfm files

• Modified the source to enable immediate compilation under Delphi 4, and included a new Delphi 4 package [Dave Murray]
• Added an OnBefore/OnAfterTableCreate event to the table component [Per-Eric Larsson]
• Some more tweaks to the synchronisation component - newly included is versioning support to prevent different versions of a table synchronising against each other [Per-Eric Larsson]

• Finally got around to properly testing the TpfgRecordBuffer class; fixed some bugs in it
• Some changes made to the synchronisation component [Per-Eric Larsson]
• Changed the temporary handle variable name used in the Exists method to TempHandle. Using "FHandle" as the name was just asking for trouble. Also modified it to immediately return true if the table is open - it obviously exists in that case
• Fixed a glitch in the AsDateTime property of fields
• Fixed an incorrect reference in VarArrayHighBound from 0 to 1
• Fixed a glitch in the table destructor method when an active table was freed - the internal objects were being freed before the table was closed
• Enhanced the integer functionality so that empty fields now correctly store as zero rather than raising an error
• Improved support for null DateTime's - now a completely empty palm DateTime field will be represented as TDateTime(0.0) and vice versa
• Fixed an indexing error when passing out custom fields as an array when AsVariant is called on a field
• Adjusted the version field down to Word, which is the size of the version field in CCreateDb. I'm not sure why I had it as LongWord to begin with
• Fixed a glitch in the Field.AsVariant routine - it will now return a variant with the same (or nearest compatible) type as the field [before it would only return as a string or a variant array of bytes for custom types]
• Enhanced field value accessors to correctly handle unassigned field values - returning whatever empty/null value is appropriate
• Added a call to SyncYieldCycles in the SetProgress method - this allows the entire progress dialog to refresh itself it you don't immediately follow with a call to a HotSync API method
• Tweaked the Exists method so that it will generate a standard exception if any error other than SYNCERR_NOT_FOUND is returned
• Added an OnReadField to the TpfgRecordBuffer class to allow loading of arbitrary field/values

• Added support for handling tables with a variable number of fields. Two new events, OnReadField and OnWriteField, allow the user to control packing and unpacking of record fields. Still keeping the StrictFields property, but it is deprecated in favour of this new style.
• Added a PurgeTable method to the table to remove all deleted records from the Palm table [Per-Eric Larsson]
• Added a new icon for the sync component [Per-Eric Larsson]
• Slightly reworked the conduit configuration code to make it part of the Palm component; thus giving it access to the conduit's name when giving a default dialog [Per-Eric Larsson]

• Added a StrictFields property to FieldDefs. By turning it off, it makes it easier to synchronise against tables with a variable number of fields of the same type at the end (such as the Address book), by adding supurfulous field definitions of that type

• Bugfixes to the pfgPalmSyncComponent.pas file
• Changed the PTCHAR type from "^TCHAR" to "PChar" to improve type conversions when calling functions