ONE

Introduction to Delphi programming

During this course you will be learning to program in the computer language
DELPHI. This is a Windows-based general purpose language which can carry out
calculations, display and draw graphics, and save data on disc; it is a good language
to use for a wide variety of computing projects.

Load the Delphi editing screen by clicking on the Delphi icon:

The main sections of the screen display are shown on page 2.

Drop down menus

By clicking on the words at the top line of the screen, you have access to a wide
range of programming facilities.

Short cut buttons

The group of buttons in the top left corner of the screen provide a quick way of
carrying out some of the more common programming tasks in Delphi. If you move
the mouse pointer to any of the buttons and leave it stationary for a couple of
seconds, a yellow help label will appear. Don't use a short cut button unless you
understand its purpose!

Screen form window

This grey dotted grid is a representation of the program screen. You can use the
grid to position the text, pictures and other components which will be displayed
when your program is running.

Component selection
This menu provides the large toolkit of components which will be used to construct
your programs.

Program unit window

The program unit window can be displayed by clicking the mouse on the Toggle
Form/Unit short cut button:
Toggle
Form/Unit

As a Delphi project is being developed , a program is written in the Unit window -

partly by the computer and partly by the programmer.

1
 component drop down
selection menus

screen form
window

short cut
buttons

object
inspector
program unit
window

Writing a Delphi program

2
Make sure that the object inspector window is visible on the screen. If not, you can
make it appear by going to the VIEW drop down menu and clicking OBJECT
INSPECTOR.

Scroll down the properties list to find

WINDOW STATE. Click in the right
column and use the small arrow to
display a drop down menu. Select
MAXIMIZED.

We are now ready to run our first Delphi program, although it will not do very
much yet. Click on the run short cut button:
Run

The program will produce a blank grey screen. To stop the program and return to
the Delphi editing screen, click the cross in the top right corner:

Exit program

Saving the program on disc

Before going any further it would be a good idea to save the program on disc -
always save your work at regular intervals in case anything goes wrong. A Delphi
programming project consists of a number of separate files, so it is simplest to
create a new directory for each project.

Use the START button in the bottom left of the screen to select WINDOWS
EXPLORER. Create a NEW FOLDER in your work directory, and call this
PROG1. Close the Windows Explorer screen.

3
Select the FILE drop down menu on the Delphi editing screen, and click on SAVE
PROJECT. A file window will appear.

Change to the sub-directory PROG1 which you just created, and click 'OK' to
accept the file names unit1.pas and project1.dpr which are offered by the system.

Using components
Click on the grey dotted grid of the Form Window to bring this to the front of the
editing screen. Using the mouse, drag this window larger so that the grey grid
covers most of the screen.

Select the button component.

Move onto the grid and hold down the left mouse button to create the button
component. Drag this near to the top right of the grid.
Button component

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Press the ENTER key to display the object inspector for the button component, and
change the caption entry so that the word 'Exit' appears on the button.

We are going to use this button as a more convenient way of stopping the program.

Quickly double-click the mouse on the Exit button, and the Program Unit screen
will open:

The computer has created a section of program which will be activated when the
Exit button is pressed. This is known as an event handling procedure, and has been
given the name Button1.Click.

To make the program end when the button is clicked, it is necessary to type the
instruction
halt;
between the lines begin and end. Don't forget the semi-colon after the word halt.

If you enlarge and scroll the Unit Window, you will find that the computer has
written quite a lot of program already. This need not bother us at this stage - you
will learn the purpose of all these lines of program as the course progresses.

We are now ready to test the modified program. Before running it this time, go to
the COMPILE drop down menu and click on COMPILE. The computer will carry
out a check of the program and give an error message if there is any error. Once
the program has compiled successfuly, click the RUN shortcut button.

The grey screen appears again, but this time clicking the Exit button will take you
back to the Delphi editing screen.

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Displaying a bitmap image
Photographs and clip art are often stored on disc as bitmap images - these have file
names with the letters BMP at the end. Bitmap images can easily be displayed in
Delphi programs.

Click the ADDITIONAL tab on the component menu, and select the image
component :
image

Move onto the grid and drag the mouse to produce an image area. Double-click the
mouse in the image area to open the picture editor window.

Press the LOAD button. A file CAMERA.BMP has been saved for you on disc.
Locate the directory, select the file and press OK. A preview picture will appear:

Image area

Click OK and the picture will be loaded into the image area.

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Initially the picture is fixed in size, but this can be made adjustable. Press ENTER
to bring up the object inspector window for the image box, then set the STRETCH
property to TRUE.

Once this is done, the picture will expand to fill the image area, and can be adjusted
by dragging with the mouse.

Compile and run the program to check that the picture is displayed.

Finally, let's add buttons to the screen to allow the picture to be turned on and off
while the program is running. Select the button component, and add two more
buttons to the form. Label these 'Show picture' and 'Hide picture':

Double-click the mouse on the 'Show picture' button to create an event handler.
Add the command:
image1.visible:=true;

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Double-click on the 'Hide picture' button, and add the command:
image1.visible:=false;

The program is refering to the picture as image1. It can be turned on and off by
clicking the buttons, which set its visible property to be true or false. Compile and
run the program to try this.

Save the completed project by clicking on the save project short cut button:
save
project

SUMMARY
In this section you have:
• loaded the Delphi editing screen and identified the sections of the screen display
• started a new project
• maximised the program window to fill the screen when it runs
• created a sub-directory in which the project can be saved
• placed a button on the form grid, and set up an event handling procedure to
respond to the button being clicked
• placed an image box on the form grid, and loaded a bitmap image
• set the image stretch property to allow size adjustment
• added commands to event handler procedures to show and hide the image, and
exit from the program