What's New -  November, 2016

November 16, 2016:  I've been working on testing and implementing some changes triggered by the availability of the free Delphi 10.1 Berlin (D10) compiler download.  It has many enhancements over Delphi 7 (D7), and is a good candidate for new programs.   The bad news is that many of the several hundred D7 based programs on the site would require at least minor modifications to compile on D10.   Many of the differences are not new, but previous Delphi versions had price tags in the hundreds of $.  Converting D7 source code to more recent versions is not something I look forward to doing "for fun".  So here's the evolving approach and what I've changed so far:

 A viewer recompiled our Akerue word finding game under D10 and reported that it compiled but did not recognize words entered by the user.  The problem was that our dictionary program required changes to account for a new default string format using 16 bit rather than 8 bit characters; necessary for languages non-Latin alphabets, but a pain in  the you-know what for us.  The library unit which handles dictionary access has been updated to use 8 bit character strings and Akerue is working for compilation under D7 or D10.  The updated library can be downloaded from that page and also from the other big dictionary user, WordStuff, which is wrapper for  six other word oriented puzzles.    I also updated our Delphi 7 - Delphi XE Differences page to include some notes about the D10 conversion steps recognized so far.