Introduction

LMD-Tools 10.0 provides several major changes against release 8:

• Compatibility with Delphi/C++ Builder 2010
• Support for Delphi/CBuilder 5 and Delphi 8 was dropped (licenses for older releases are as always included, though).
  This resulted in code cleanup and optimization, because much redundant legacy code could be removed.
• Number of LMD-Tools editions was reduced to 2 (LMD-Tools SE and LMD-Tools, which is equal to previous LMD-Tools CE licenses minus DesignPack/ScriptPack)

Furthermore LMD-Tools integrates even more into the LMD 2010 product line, sharing major parts (the LMD Shared Runtime) with other main LMD products (LMD ElPack, LMD IDE-Tools).
Besides that new global objects and classes were introduced and existing ones improved. At last numerous improvements and fixes to existing components were added.

LMD 2010 Shared Runtime

LMD-Tools, LMD ElPack and LMD IDE-Tools share the same core runtime. This avoids redundant code and provides common advanced features for all major LMD products. This includes a shared Unicode library, improved HTMLRenderer (including support for display of TGraphic descendants) and shared imagelist support (all main LMD imagelist container are part of the LMD Shared Runtime packages), advanced designtime support (completely new editors for all LMD container controls, new splashscreen and configuration dialog, new component editor for TLMDGraphicList), shared component packages like LMD LogTools, LMD PrintPack, LMD InspectorPack and much more.

Updated Hint Controls

LMD Hint Controls got a massive Update in technical (-> drawing mechanism, e.g. using regions ) and functional way (e.g. many new visual styles and HTML support). Besides that a new advanced HintSystem for displaying any number of hints was introduced. Finally hint processing was unified with LMD ElPack (e.g. Unicode support). New features are among others are:

• Titles
• Icon/Glyph support
• Customizable close buttons
• HTML Support (with images, clickable links, etc)
• Background gradients
• Customizable hint nose shape
• Support of system shadows
• Vista look.
• N-Hint controls: A new component LMDMessageHintController was introduced. It allows to design a collection of hints and display them all at once or grouped via their group index settings

Vista style controls and support

Support of Vista features - even in IDEs before Delphi/C++ 2010! Use TLMDVistaFormExtension, TLMDFormGlass, TLMDFileOpen- and TLMDFileSaveDialog to add features not available in older Delphi/C++ releases. Besides that methods for Vista and Aero Glass detection are provided. Includes updated TLMDTaskDialog (now with HTML and Unicode support) - use vista style dialogs even on non-Vista systems!

New shared packages

LMD-Tools contains new additional packages:

• LMD InspectorPack: Powerful Object Inspector component
• LMD PlugInPack: Plugin Infrastructure for your projects. Allows to extend your applications with custom modules (Win32 only)
• LMD LogTools: Advanced logging services, for use with the AnyLogger client (when available, the local AnyLogger Client will be free for all customers who purchased a main LMD 2010 VCL product (LMD-Tools, LMD ElPack, IDE-Tools or VCL Complete).

Besides that existing shared packages like LMD PrintPack were improved.

Validator, XML and regular expression support

The LMD 2010 Shared Runtime contains a XML support library, which is extremly fast, fully unicode-enabled and which adds only a small footprint to your Exe-files. XML data can be loaded from files, custom streams, resources or strings. Like other new support libraries this one is written completely in Pascal - no need for additional DLL's or Object files.
Besides that Regular Expression evaluation support was updated! The RegEx support from previous version was replaced by a new unicode-enabled native RegEx library with PRCE compatible syntax.
New:Validator controls: Except TLMDHintErrorProvider (lmdcore package) all Validator and Error Provider controls are now included in lmdrtlx package and can be shared among LMD-Tools and LMD ElPack.

Improved ThemeEngine support

The native ThemeEngine of LMD-Tools 9 was improved and is part of to the LMD 2010 Shared Runtime. Like in previous releases any .MSStyles theme file can be used at runtime. Such .MSStyles can be also encapsulated in compressed CAB files.

 Native PNG and TLMDBitmap support, compression formats

The LMD 2010 Runtime includes native support for PNG files (as TGraphic implementation and with TLMDPNGImageList control). PNG files can be used in your apps like any other TGraphic formats like TBitmap or TJpeg. Besides that the new TLMDBitmap class was introduced, which is derived from TBitmap and mainly utilizes the Windows built-in OleLoadPicture function. GIF, JPEG, Icon or Bitmap Files can be loaded without additional special VCL libs (features are not available In VCL.NET, because support of different graphic formats is available through ImageFormat in TBitmap property already.

 SVN access and DevUtil support

LMD-Tools can be purchased as standalone package or as part of LMD VCL Complete. The LMD VCL Complete Package includes all LMD 2010 VCL(.NET) packages distributed by LMD Innovative. This product is also available as Subscription release with SVN access (the LMD-Tools source repository). The LMD VCL 2010 source branch is quite complex with three main products and various sub- and standalone packages: Therefore LMD DevUtil was created, which allows simple and fast compiling and installing of any possible package combination into any supported IDE. This is a complete automated process and saves a lot of time against compiling and installing the package within the IDE by loading project groups.