Dimensional Data

TMS Analytics & Physics library is a set of classes that provide functionality for building powerful math and engineering applications with Delphi IDE. In the new version 3.3 of the library, we introduced special FNC physics components to take advantage of Delphi’s rapid application development. In this article, we’ll consider the base concepts of the FNC physics components and provide information on how to work with units of measurement.  Let’s consider the following FNC physics components: TFNCUnitProvider – creates a physics environment for the application; contains information about registered physics entities and provides units of measurement to other physics components. TFNCUnitConverter – provides properties and functionality to convert physical values measured in two different units. To begin an FNC physics application we first need to put a TFNCUnitProvider component on the form. The component has the following published properties: Quantities (TQuantityCollection) – a collection of registered physical quantities. Prefixes (TPrefixCollection) – a collection of registered prefixes that can be used to create units with multiplier factors (like kilo-, milli-, and so on). Units (TUnitCollection) – a collection of registered units of measurement that can be used to create complicated derived units. When you put a TFNCUnitProvider on the form in design-time, it automatically finds all registered quantities, prefixes, and units. The collections of these items are not editable, they only provide information about available physical entities. When an item is selected in a collection, its properties are shown in the Object Inspector. In the picture below, you can see a collection of physical quantities:   Any quantity has the following properties: Name (string) – the name of the quantity. Symbol (string) – a common symbol for the quantity designation. Dimension (string) – physical dimension of the quantity. As an example, we showed the ‘Area’ quantity. Its physical dimension is ‘L^2’ – squared length. More information about physical dimensions can be found in the documentation for the library. Analogously, you can view information about all registered unit prefixes, as shown in the picture below.   A prefix provides the following properties: Name (string) – the name of the prefix. Symbol (string) – symbol, identifying the prefix in composite units. Value (real) – the multiplier factor of the prefix. And finally, you can view all available units of measurements.   Any unit provides the following properties: Name (string) – the name of the unit. Symbol (string) – the symbol of the unit that is used to identify this unit for conversion algorithm and other manipulations. Dimension (string) – physical dimension of the unit. The unit provider component supplies the physical entities to other components, for example, to the TFNCUnitConverter. This component is intended to convert physical values measured in two different units and has the following properties: Provider (TFNCUnitProvider) – a unit provider. Unit1 (TUnitProperty) – the first unit of measurement for conversion. Unit2 (TUnitProperty) – the second unit of measurement for conversion. Value1 (real) – the first value, measured in the first unit of measurement. Value2 (real) – the second value, measured in the second unit of measurement. Valid (boolean) – read-only value defining if all input items are valid for conversion. Error (string) – read-only text of an error that occurred during conversion. IntervalConversion (boolean) – defines if making the interval conversion or not. First of all, you need to […]

Intro TMS FNC Core is the core foundation of FNC. It offers a solid structure for the other FNC component sets such as TMS FNC UI Pack and TMS FNC Maps. In the past, we have demonstrated the capabilities of TMS FNC Core in various ways. Below are a couple of links to blog posts about functionality available in TMS FNC Core. A browser, JSON persistence, printing, SVG support and many more. Today I want to focus on another “hidden gem”: PDF generation and in particular focusing on drawing complex graphics. Basic drawing  Before going to complex drawing statements, we need to take a look at the basics. Generating a PDF starts by specifying a file name, adding the first page, and then the PDF context is ready to be accessed via the Graphics property. In the sample below, we draw a simple rectangle by setting the properties of the fill & stroke and by calling p.Graphics.DrawRectangle. uses   FMX.TMSFNCPDFLib, FMX.TMSFNCGraphicsTypes; procedure TPDFGenerationForm.GeneratePDF; var   p: TTMSFNCPDFLib; begin   p := TTMSFNCPDFLib.Create;   try     p.BeginDocument(‘MyPDF.pdf’);     p.NewPage;     p.Graphics.Fill.Color := gcYellowgreen;     p.Graphics.Stroke.Color := gcGreen;     p.Graphics.Stroke.Width := 4;     p.Graphics.DrawRectangle(RectF(100, 100, 300, 300));     p.EndDocument(True);   finally     p.Free;   end; end; This generates the following PDF The basic ITMSFNCCustomPDFGraphicsLib interface (p.Graphics property) exposes a lot of basic drawing calls to draw shapes constructed out of simple primitives or more complex paths. On top of that, it’s possible to export images as well. Using these calls gives you the flexibility to enhance your PDF with vector sharp graphics. The way this needs to be done is by calling each draw statement in a specific order. See this sample below to draw a bezier curve. uses   FMX.TMSFNCPDFLib, FMX.TMSFNCGraphicsTypes, FMX.TMSFNCPDFCoreLibBase; procedure TPDFGenerationForm.GeneratePDF; var   p: TTMSFNCPDFLib; begin   p := TTMSFNCPDFLib.Create;   try     p.BeginDocument(‘MyPDF.pdf’);     p.NewPage; p.Graphics.Stroke.Color := gcDarkseagreen; p.Graphics.Stroke.Width := 3; p.Graphics.Stroke.Kind := gskSolid; p.Graphics.DrawPathBegin; p.Graphics.DrawPathMoveToPoint(PointF(350, 40)); p.Graphics.DrawPathAddCurveToPoint(PointF(310, 130), PointF(445, 50), PointF(398, 115)); p.Graphics.DrawPathEnd(dmPathStroke); p.Graphics.Stroke.Width := 0.5; p.Graphics.Stroke.Color := gcBlack; p.Graphics.Fill.Color := gcNull; p.Graphics.Fill.Kind := gfkSolid; p.Graphics.DrawLine(PointF(350, 40), PointF(310, 130)); p.Graphics.DrawLine(PointF(445, 50), PointF(398, 115)); p.Graphics.DrawRectangle(RectF(442.5, 47.5, 447.5, 52.5)); p.Graphics.DrawRectangle(RectF(395.5, 50 + 62.5, 400.5, 50 + 67.5)); p.Graphics.DrawRectangle(RectF(347.5, 50 – 12.5, 352.5, 50 – 7.5)); p.Graphics.DrawRectangle(RectF(307.5, 127.5, 312.5, 132.5));     p.EndDocument(True);   finally     p.Free;   end; end; The result of the above code is a bezier curve with lines and handles mimicking interaction. Mapping FNC Core graphics onto PDF graphics After the initial release, we had some requests on exporting FNC components to PDF. The PDF graphics layer was too limited to export components to PDF, therefore we have created the TTMSFNCGraphicsPDFEngine class, which decends from TTMSFNCGraphics, the core class for all FNC cross-platform drawing. On top of the default PDF graphics, the TTMSFNCGraphicsPDFEngine gives you complex paths, matrix transforms as well as various flexible image drawing options. Together with SVG support we can then load the SVG as a resource and draw the information as vector graphics inside the PDF. Internally, the SVG is parsed, elements are transformed to FNC graphics paths and with that information the PDF graphics engine draws renders the SVG onto the PDF canvas, via the earlier mentioned drawing calls. All in a couple of lines. uses   FMX.TMSFNCPDFLib, FMX.TMSFNCGraphicsTypes,   FMX.TMSFNCGraphicsPDFEngine, FMX.TMSFNCTypes; procedure TPDFGenerationForm.GeneratePDF; var   p: TTMSFNCPDFLib;   g: TTMSFNCGraphicsPDFEngine;   bmp: TTMSFNCBitmap; begin […]

Next tuesday, Feb 8 at 5h00 UTC 18h00 CET, we have a new webinar you will not want to miss! Our experts & Embarcadero MVPs Wagner Landgraf and Roman Yankovsky will introduce a brand new product GraphQL for Delphi to you. This webinar gives you the opportunity to learn what GraphQL is, what you can use it for and then show how to use it from Delphi using the full GraphQL-spec complaint library “GraphQL for Delphi” including some live examples. You will learn how you can apply GrapQL to create highly flexible API servers with a minimum effort where the client can choose on how to optimize its communication with the server.  During the webinar, the GraphQL for Delphi product will be officially launched and will become available in both a free edition for non-commercial use and a normal licensed version. Attendees will also be entitled to an introductory discount coupon for purchasing the normal licensed version.   Register now! Register here to ensure your seat for the webinar on February 8 from 5PM to 6PM UTC (18h00 – 19h00 CET)

We are very excited to announce a new product TMS MemInsight in the TMS family that results out of the collaboration with long-time Delphi expert Stefan Meisner and the TMS team. Stefan has a deep knowledge of Delphi technical internals to monitor memory allocation, getting call-stack information, exception handling, challenges with multi-threaded development and much more. Together with our focus on bringing easy to use component-based and as low-code as possible solutions and tools, we strongly believe that not only for TMS MemInsight but also future product ideas, we can continue to bring more value to you and come to the 1 + 1 = 11  winning formula. TMS MemInsight v1.0 Whereas most memory allocation tracking tools are static, that is producing a report on application close or upon application crash, the difference with TMS MemInsight is that it is a dynamic memory allocation profiling tool that is used at run-time. This means that also while your application is running without issues, you can monitor where there are possibly performance issues due to consuming huge amounts of memory.  With TMS MemInsight, you can continuously inspect memory allocation during run-time and get information on classes for which memory is allocated and get the class info, call stack, thread, property inspection, memory dump etc… of everything. With a statistics view, it is easy to see where the majority of allocated application memory is going to.  When you run the tool in debug mode with a map file, it is able to directly bring you to the position in the source code in the Delphi IDE of where memory was allocated. TMS MemInsight also allows to provide additional information, most importantly the call stack, when exceptions occur. This allows you to understand better where exceptions come from and remedy these. Getting started To get started with TMS MemInsight is as easy as dropping the TTMSMemInsightProfiler component on the form. With this component on the main form of the application, it is default configured to immediately show the profiler tool when you start your application. Or you can also choose to start the profiler only from code when you need it. You can control at component level or in code, what monitoring tools are active and live. There is not much more to do to get a new deep view on the internals of your application! Discover it also for yourself in this video: What’s next We have plenty of ideas of possible future directions of not only the TMS MemInsight tool but also new complimentary tools. But of course, as always, it is your wishes and requests for specific functionality that steer our development priorities. We look forward to hear from you what enhancements can be done in TMS MemInsight to make your development even easier and what other development tools you further wish. Contact us by email or leave a comment here.