[DUG] Image transparency and the Hotfix poltergeist

[John Bird]

Sometimes an image is transparent, sometimes not - unpredictable!

Before you look at this first problem, look below to the Hotfix problem 2
below.  I think that was the underlying cause...


[
Problem 1 - I have some round LED image bitmaps, I store in a TimageList,
and assign to a Timage when I want.

The images are BMP's with a square white background around a round image,
and set to transparent so the white background does not show.

The problem is - Mostly transparency works - no white background, but
sometimes the white background shows.

Any ideas?

D2006, I have XP Manifest on the form.  Is this related to the other
transparency problem related a few days ago with labels? The only other idea
I had is that the images are not exactly square - 62x63 pixels, and the
Timage is 64x64 - but I fixed that and it still does not work
consistently...

This is the code in case I am doing something silly ... LEDStatus is the
index into the ImageList1

  if HawkStatus<>LEDStatus then
  begin
    LEDStatus:=HawkStatus;
    ImageStatus.Picture:=nil;
    imagelist1.GetBitmap(LEDStatus,imageStatus.picture.bitmap);
    ImageStatus.Transparent:=true;  //in case lost
    Application.ProcessMessages;
  end;

Actually about 2 hours later after further investigation the story gets
weirder.

I tried deleting the TXPManifest.  It didn't make a difference.  HOWEVER nor
did the buttons revert to non XP buttons.....
It looks like that a project cannot have the XPManifest deleted....there was
no trace in the source, but the DCU still refers to a XPMan, even though the
component has gone. And the buttons etc are XP ones. The XP Manifest
poltergeist is in the house!

If I reboot and run the program outside the IDE it seems to behaves
consistently properly as faras the images go.
Inside the IDE is the inconsistency.


[Problem 2 - 

Now today I installed Hotfix 10 (BDS2006HotFixRollup2) as I saw it was there
on the Borland site.
(I installed the previous Hotfix (1-9) in October last year.)

Is this the source of the problem?

I installed the hotfix without the IDE running, and since then have had some
real crashes when exiting BDS:

Like:

Access Violation at address 20C707A0 in module 'coreide100.bpl', read of
address 000000A4.

Then:  Exception EinvalidPointer on module rtl100.bpl at 00006581.  Invalid
pointer operation

Followed by the MS message BDS has had to close - tell Microsoft about this
problem?

After 4 or 5 such crashes and reboots it seems to have stabilised, and is
now not crashing.

Also the IDE now starts and exits spectacularly faster than before - 20
seconds startup as opposed to between 1 and 2 minutes  (2 minutes when I
first got it).

-AND- the problems with the transparent form also have gone away.  For now.

The IDE no longer seems haunted by gremlins bent on causing me to lose 4
hours chasing phantom problems.....

Anyone else had such oddities with the Hotfix?

And just what have they changed????  It all seemed to be minor stuff to do
with international characters and some BDS 2006 Help issues according to the
release notes....

    *  bugs related to unicode characters and Korean characters
    * many fixes related to the WSDL importer and SOAP support
    * length limitations on search paths
    * problems with the F1 key on the form designer
    * COM\ActiveX menu items and wizards in the Professional version

John