http://blog.delphi-jedi.net Joint Endeavor of Delphi Innovators of Windows Programming Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:10:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A long time ago I wrote an article about this strange WinAPI function called GetEffectiveRightsFromAcl. There was a problem that I showed how to solve (see my article and the comment in the MSDN doc). However, this function has never been a good way for retrieving the possible access mask. ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/03/13/what-is-geteffectiverightsfromacl-for-2/ If you are interested in the history of Windows, as I am, you should read the article The Secret Origin of Windows by Tandy Trower the product manager of Windows 1.0. This article gives a deep insight into the journey Tandy and his developers had to endure to bring a ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/03/13/site-recommondation-history-of-windows/ This article is about how to retrieve the owner of a file. If you are experienced with some of the WinAPI security function this can be pretty easy. There are some problems that needs to be addressed though. The first one is the size of the security items like the ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/03/11/retrieving-file-owner/ Many Windows Programmers still have trouble when it comes to sessions, window stations and desktops. They frequently get mixed up and we can see a lot of question on the Internet about e.g. how to spawn processes in all logged-on user desktops (rather than sessions).  Hence, I have listed some ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/03/05/site-recommendation-terminal-session-and-desktops/ In my last article "Jwscl and FreeAndNil" there were some great comments on the source design. Oliver told me to use a guarded memory page so the memory is always invalid. With his information I wrote a source code that creates a pointer which always triggers an access violation. Unfortunately, Access ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/02/25/jwscl-and-freeandnil-second-attempt/ There is a lot of talking about the usage of FreeAndNil in destructors. I've never thought about it before so I used it quite often even in destructors. Although I don't use it as a universal remedy function, it still seems to be a bad design: a thought shared by ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/02/25/jwscl-and-freeandnil/ I had some free time that I used to put together all the features JWSCL provides currently. There are some more features that are implemented by other tool classes or functions that I left out in favor of a good overview. A complete overview of all classes, methods and more ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/02/22/jwscl-features-overview/ I had some trouble writing these lines because usually I do not want to publish criticism. But Oliver told me that it would be a good idea and I don't want to disagree :) . Valid for all open source projects, also the JEDI API&WSCL projects heavily depend on their users. ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/02/15/reminder-to-you/ I had some trouble with this rather complicated COM structure called ACTRL_ACCESS. So I post a diagram to show its design. Otherwise it would be a pity to leave it on my private hard drive. The ACTRL_ACCESS structure is used by the interface method IAccessControl::GetAllAccessRights (and others) which is rather hard ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/02/11/actrl_access-diagram/ I'm writing this article because I want to share programming habits with you. What habit did prove to be a good one for you? Share yours then, please. I always add "RaiseLastOsError" to every Windows API call. if not ImpersonateLoggedOnUser(token) then RaiseLastOsError; In this way you don't miss any failed call ... http://blog.delphi-jedi.net/2010/01/14/programming-habits/