Delphi XE8 video

The FireUI Multi-Device Designer makes it easy to create 

user interfaces across multiple form factors, devices and 

target platforms.

The Multi-Device Preview provides a design time view of 

what your application is going to look like on a wide range 

of devices. This gives you a great visual aid for developing 

your applications, allowing you to easily identify which user 

interfaces to fine-tune for a specific form factor or device.

The Multi-Device Preview window shows a preview of the current 

active form across all selected devices. Zoom in to see a detailed 

view of a specific device, or choose from different view modes to 

change the presentation of the devices in the Multi-Device Preview window.

CutePDF Form SDK
The easiest and most affordable PDF forms technology available.
From: cutepdf.com

Author opinion:
"This SDK is the most easy to use Form SDK i have tested, it is very powerful because it is easy to learn and apply!, with a few lines of code you can build a complex forms application.
If you have a paper forms and want to convert it to fillable form, just scan and import it to the FormMax tools and place your fields by WYSIWYG editor, name the fields and publish it to PDF, HTML,... !!"

Company description:
CutePDF Form SDK allows you to empower your applications with the best PDF forms technology. Whether you need to populate a PDF file's form with data, stamp images, retrieve data from an interactive PDF form, flatten a completed form, set preferences or add security to your PDF documents – with CutePDF Form SDK, you can handle it all with just a few simple API calls.
 
CutePDF Form SDK is based on the native COM (ActiveX) architecture and provides dual IDispatch interface, callable from Visual C++, Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro, VBScript, Active Server Pages, .NET, Delphi, etc. It's perfect for multi-task, multi-threaded server applications.

Features Highlight

• Populate a PDF file's form fields by familiar name-value pairs and create a new completed PDF form or file. You can set both value and formatted display string of a field.
• Stamp images into the specified form field.
• Set the general options of form objects and modify the properties of a form field.
• Set the default value of fields. 
• Return the type of form object by name. 
• Set and/or get the list of items of combo boxes or list boxes.
• Import form data from a FDF, XFDF or XML file into a PDF template and create a new merged PDF form or file;  Import form data from a memory buffer.
• Extract form data field by field directly from a PDF form or from a FDF/XFDF/XML file.
• Export data from a PDF form and create a new form data file in FDF, XFDF (XML-based FDF) or XML format; Write form data to a memory buffer.
• Create a FDF, XFDF or XML data file from name-value pairs.
• Flatten a PDF form to remove the fields and stamp the content into the document.
• Add security (native 40-bit & 128-bit PDF encryption) to your PDF forms to prevent anyone from changing it or altering the information.
• Retrieve or set the information of PDF documents.
• Write a completed PDF file to a memory buffer.
• Digitally Sign a PDF Document.
• Security Features: Add security (40-bit & 128-bit) to any PDF files; Change or Remove the encryption of your PDF documents.
• Utility Features: Merge PDF documents; Split PDF document.
• Utility Features: Merge interactive PDF form file.
• Set the opening display options (Viewer Preferences) for the document.
• Stamp stylized text directly on the specified page.

From: bytescout.com

Convert PDF to text, PDF to CSV, PDF to XML, extract images from PDF, extract information about PDF files in .NET and ActiveX interfaces with Bytescout PDF Extractor SDK.

PDF Extractor SDK allows developers to
convert PDF to text, extract images from PDF, convert PDF to CSV for Excel, PDF to XML.
Works WITHOUT any additional software required.

Debenu Quick PDF Library 11

Want to create, render, print, secure, merge, split and manipulate PDF files with just a few lines of code on Windows, Mac and iOS? Enhance your capability with Debenu Quick PDF Library: a powerful, royalty-free developer PDF SDK for adding PDF functionality to your applications. With more than 900 functions for use with C, C++, C#, Delphi (version 4 to XE7), Objective-C, Swift, Python, PHP, Visual Basic, VB.NET, ASP, PowerBASIC, Pascal and more – it’s like your ultimate PDF toolkit. Used by developers of all levels working with PDFs, it’s specifically useful for getting products to market faster. It includes a robust API, and is available in a variety of different editions for use on Windows, Mac and iOS. Purchase options include: single developer license, multiple developer license and source code license. Debenu Quick PDF Library is licensed on a per developer, per platform basis. Support is included for the most common programming languages. Work smarter and faster today with Debenu.

Key Features

Create, render and print PDFs
Secure, sign and protect PDFs
Create, fill and edit PDF forms
Split, merge, append and combine PDFs
Convert EMF to PDF (Windows only)
Extract text and images from PDFs
Work with PDF Layers
Edit initial view and document properties of PDFs
Add text, images and barcodes to PDFs
Advanced support for JavaScript, bookmarks, vector graphics, geospatial PDF
Direct access functionality (load files from disk, not memory)
Annotations, bookmarks and links for easy navigation
Create Windows and Mac applications

Editions

Debenu Quick PDF Library for Windows

• ActiveX – ActiveX COM for Windows development supports C#, Visual C++, C++ Builder, Delphi, Visual Basic, PHP, Python, Java, PowerBASIC and more. 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• DLL – Dynamically-linked library for Windows development supports C, Visual C++, C++ Builder, C#, Visual Basic, Python and more. 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• Delphi – DCUs and optionally source code for development using all versions of Delphi 4, 5, 6, 7, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, XE, XE2, XE3, XE4, XE5, XE6 and XE7. 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
• LIB – Statically-linked library for Windows development supports C and C++. 32-bit only. 64-bit coming soon.

Debenu Quick PDF Library for Mac

• Dylib – Xcode Dynamic Library for Mac development using Objective-C, Swift, C, C++ and Python. 32-bit and 64-bit.
• Delphi – DCUs for development using Delphi XE2, XE3, XE4, XE5,  XE6 and XE7 on Windows to generate apps for the Mac operating system. 32-bit only.

Debenu Quick PDF Library for iOS

• iOS Static Lib – iOS Static Lib for Apple iOS development using Objective-C, Swift, C, C++ and more. 32-bit and 64-bit. arm6/arm7/arm7s/arm64 supported.

License Definition

• Per developer, per platform. Licenses are sold on a per developer, per platform basis. So developers licenses need to be purchased for each platform (Win, Mac or iOS) you wish to support.
• Royalty free. You can use Debenu Quick PDF Library in your applications without needing to pay any royalty fees for distribution.
• No limits on number of applications. We sell licenses based on the number of your developers who will be using the library, not the number of applications your company intends to build.
• No reselling. You are not allowed to resell Debenu Quick PDF Library or your license key unless explicitly permitted in writing by Debenu.
• Compiled applications only. You are not permitted to create your own PDF libraries, developer components, SDKs or toolkits using Debenu Quick PDF Library.

• Based on industry standard Ext JS cross-browser JavaScript library.
• Ext JS bindings are created using ExtPascal library wrappers. (ExtPascal self-translates Pascal objects to Ext JS JavaScript objects)
• Creates stateful Web applications.
• Complete IDE support for creating projects, designing forms and handling data modules.
• Delphi style event handling.
• Advanced client side event scripting
• Automatic handling of Delphi data modules per session.
• Deployment options: ISAPI Web application, Standalone Web application, Windows Service Web application.
• Supported Delphi versions: Turbo Delphi Pro, Delphi 2006, Delphi 2007, Delphi 2009, Delphi 2010, Delphi XE, Delphi XE2, XE3, XE4, X5, XE6 and XE7 (Win32 & Win64).
• Supported C++ Builder versions: C++ Builder 2006 - XE7.

PostgresDAC new release
Microolap released the new major version 3.0.0 of PostgresDAC component suite.
It introduces Fetch-On-Demand asynchronous mode for TPSQLQuery, support for
built-in range types, support for geometric types.
New major 3.0.0 version introduces Fetch-On-Demand asynchronous mode for TPSQLQuery, support for built-in range types, support for geometric types.

Meet the PostgresDAC v3.0.0

Dump and restore functionality

• output formats (binary, text, directory, gzipped),
• parallel dumping and restoring,
• comprehensive selection, filtering and reordering of archived items,
• SQL-92 specific output options, etc.

Asynchronous Fetch-On-Demand mode

• TPSQLQuery.Open waits for the command to be completed. The application might have other work to do (such as maintaining a user interface), in which case it won’t be a good decision to block while waiting for a response.
• Since the execution of the client application is suspended while it waits for the result, it is hard for the application to decide that it would like to try to cancel the ongoing command.
• TPSQLQuery in default mode always collects a command's entire result, buffering it in a single place. While this behavior simplifies some internal logic, it can be impractical for results containing many rows.

• To get advantages of the Fetch-On-Demand mode one should use read-only TPSQLQuery objects. This restriction will be removed with time probably.
• Each read-only TPSQLQuery component must have its separate TPSQLDatabase component since Fetch-On-Demand command flow will block a connection until getting the last row of the result set.

Support for built-in range and geometric field types

• TPSQLRangeField
• TPSQLPointField
• TPSQLCircleField
• TPSQLBoxField
• TPSQLLSegField

Enhanced Manual

• chm,
• pdf.
• epub (in progress).

Full change log:

Nicomsoft OCR SDK

Unique character analysis technology delivering reliable recognition of any fonts even in poor-quality images

Key features

• Excellent analysis algorithms for poor-quality text, distorted, connected and broken characters
• Dictionaries are used for the best recognition
• Supports 26 languages: Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
• Ability to scan documents from TWAIN-compatible devices
• Bar codes support: EAN-13/UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8, Code 128, Code 39, Interleaved 2 of 5 and QR Code.
• ICR module for handwritten digits
• Multiple-core CPUs support: speeding up analysis of even a single text fragment through efficient parallel processing of recognition
• Supports multiple image formats: BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF and many others
• Intuitive OCR API and sample projects with complete source code for various programming languages.
• Cross-platform: Windows and Linux platforms are supported

Nicomsoft OCR SDK is designed for using with:

• Microsoft Visual C/C++
• Microsoft Visual C#
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
• Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET)
• Microsoft Visual Basic
• Borland Delphi
• Borland C++ Builder
• Java
• Other programming systems that can access functions in DLLs or can use COM objects.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) – How it works

• Loading image as bitmap from given source. Source can be a file or a pointer to a memory block, also good OCR system must understand a lot of image formats: BMP, TIFF (both one-page and multi-pages images), JPEG, PNG and so on. PDF files must be supported as well, many documents are stored as images in PDF format and the only way to extract text from such files is to perform OCR.
• Detecting the most important image features like resolution and inversion. Many OCR algorithms expect some predefined range of font sizes and foreground/background colors so the image must be rescaled and inverted before processing when necessary.
• Image can be skewed or it can have a lot of noise, so deskew and denoising algorithms are applied to improve the image quality.

• Many OCR algorithms require bi-tonal image, therefore color or gray image must be converted to black-white image. This process is called "binarization" and it is very important step because incorrect binarization will cause a lot of problems.

• Lines detection and removing. This step is required to improve page layout analysis, to achieve better recognition quality for underlined text, to detect tables, etc.

• Page layout analysis; this steps is also called "zoning". At this stage OCR system must detect positions and types of all important areas on the image.
• Detection of text lines and words. Sometimes it is not an easy task because of different font sizes and small spaces between words.
• Combined-broken characters analysis. It is very common situation when some characters are broken to several parts, or when a few characters touch each one; it is necessary to detect such cases and find correct position of every character.

• Recognition of characters. This is the main algorithm of OCR; an image of every character must be converted to appropriate character code. Sometimes this algorithm produces several character codes for uncertain images. For instance, recognition of the image of "I" character can produce "I", "|" "1", "l" codes and the final character code will be selected later.
• Dictionary support. This step can improve recognition quality, some characters like "1" and "I", "C" and "G" can look very similar and the dictionary can help to make the decision.
• Saving results to selected output format, for instance, searchable PDF, DOC, RTF, TXT. It is important to save original page layout: columns, fonts, colors, pictures, background and so on.

Direct Access Components for MySQL
MicroOLAP Direct Access Components for MySQL and Delphi/C++ Builder (also known as MySQLDAC) is a Borland Delphi/C++Builder component set for direct connect to MySQL database server. DAC for MySQL allows you to create Delphi/C++Builder applications without BDE, ODBC, ADO and without libmysql.dll. 

Top reasons to use DAC for MySQL

• licensed per a developer without royalty fee: you don't need to purchase end-user run-time licenses at all;
• no MySQL libraries (libmysql.dll) are required on a client workstation;
• 100% native Delphi code;
• support of Delphi 5-7, C++Builder 5-6, Borland Developer Studio 2005-2006 Win32 edition, Turbo Delphi 2006, Turbo C++ 2006, CodeGear RAD Studio 2007 (both Delphi 2007 and C++Builder 2007) Win32 Edition, CodeGear Delphi and C++Builder 2009, Embarcadero RAD Studio 2010 (Delphi 2010 and C++Builder 2010), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE (Delphi XE and C++Builder XE), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE2 (Delphi XE2 and C++Builder XE2), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE3 (Delphi XE3 and C++Builder XE3), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE4 (Delphi XE4 and C++Builder XE4), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE5 (Delphi XE5 and C++Builder XE5), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE6 (Delphi XE6 and C++Builder XE6), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE7 (Delphi XE7 and C++Builder XE7);
• support of MySQL™ 3.xx/4.x/5.x/6.x;
• only 300-400 Kb are added to your .exe file;
• full support of stored procedures (with IN, OUT and INOUT parameters);
• full compatibility with all the existing data-aware controls and report designers;
• full support of the BLOB fields;
• TDBImageEx component for JPEG images support included in the package for free (with sources);
• TNT Unicode Controls Wrappers package for Unicode applications for free (with sources);
• detailed help system and a lot of various demo applications;
• and much more. Please find more details in the online documentation.

DAC for MySQL Components:

TmySQLDatabase provides discrete control over a connection to a single database in a database application. Use TmySQLDatabase when a database application requires any of the following control over a database connection: Persistent database connections; Customized database server logins; Transaction control; Single-value queries.

TmySQLTable encapsulates a database table. Use TmySQLTable to access data in a single database table. TmySQLTable provides direct access to every record and field in an underlying database table. TmySQLTable can also work with a subset of records within a database table using ranges and filters. At design time, create, delete, update, or rename the database table connected to a TmySQLTable by right-clicking on the TmySQLTable and using the pop-up menu.

TmySQLQuery encapsulates a dataset with a result set that is based on an SQL statement. Use TmySQLQuery to access one or more MySQL tables in a database using SQL statements. TmySQLQuery component is useful because it can: Access more than one table at a time (called a "join" in SQL). Automatically access a subset of rows and columns in its underlying table(s), rather than always returning all rows and columns. Access multi-resultset queries.

TMySQLUpdateSQL applies cached updates on behalf of queries or stored procedures that can't post updates directly. Use a TMySQLUpdateSQL object to provide SQL statements used to update read-only datasets represented by TMySQLQuery component. A dataset is read-only either by design or circumstance. If a dataset is read-only by design, the application itself does not provide a user interface for updating data, but may institute a programmatic scheme behind the scenes. If a dataset is read-only by circumstance, it indicates that the MySQL returned a read-only result set. This usually happens for queries made against multiple tables. Such queries are, by SQL-92 definitions, read-only.

TmySQLStoredProc provides functionality for using stored procedures in MySQL. TmySQLStoredProc works with two types of stored procedures: with or without a result set (for the first type use Open() method or set Active property to True, for the second - use ExecProc() method). When the procedure name is put in the ProcedureName property, the component fetches information on parameters of the procedure from the server and puts it in the Params property according to parameters' types. This component provides full support of IN, OUT and INOUT parameters.

TmySQLDirectQuery is component for high-speed (3-4 times faster then with TmySQLQuery component) data fetching. But it is not TDataset compatible.

TMySQLBatchExecute component can execute SQL scripts containing more than one SQL statement.

TMySQLMacroQuery is the descendant of TMySQLQuery component and supports all of its properties, methods, events, and functionalities. The difference is in Macros and MacroChar properties which help to modify SQL script text in design-time and run-time with easy.

TMySQLMonitor monitors dynamic SQL passed to the MySQL server.

TMySQLDump allows to get SQL script with a dump of a DataBase. This script can be executed on another MySQL server by TMySQLBatchExecute component.

TMySQLTools component allows to run MySQL diagnostic and repair operations such as Repair, Check, Analyze, Optimize, Backup and Restore.

TBDE2MySQLDAC class is intended for the easy conversion of BDE Database Objects into DAC for MySQL Database Objects.