Public Beta is here!

7/11/2009

Download it now!

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Download

CrossTalk downloads.

Quick Start

This post will give you a quick start on using the CrossTalk beta.

Install

Download and run the setup. During the setup, the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 runtime installer will also be called. If you already have this runtime installed, instead you will see a screen like this.

If you see this screen, click cancel. If you clicked repair, thats OK too.

After this, complete the rest of the setup dialogs. Now you are ready to use CrossTalk. The setup has created a new group in the start menu including links to the demos.

Demos

For better collaboration with users we have put the demos on to CodePlex and open sourced them. They are available from the source tab at the CrossTalk Demos project at CodePlex. Direct download link. Extract the demos.

StringBuilder Demo

The demos contain the demo source code, and the CrossTalk project file. They do not contain the generated files, so you must generate them yourself. This is very easy and can be done by using the CrossTalk class generator utility. In the beta there is no icon yet, but find the StringBuilder.ctp file in the StringBuilder project folder and double click it. This will run the classgen utility. It is currently a console application, so you will see a console application appear briefly. After it is complete you should see a new source file in the StringBuilder project named CTmscorlib.pas.

Now open StringBuilder.dpr in Delphi. Compile the application, but to not run it yet. If it compiles without errors, the installation has succeded.

Running StringBuilder

To run StringBuilder you will need to copy two DLL's to the directory where StringBuilder.exe exists. These files must be in the application directory and you cannot place them in the path or a common directory. The CrossTalk DLL's can be found in the CrossTalk directory, bin subdirectory. Normally this is:

C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application Data\CrossTalk 1.0\Bin

So if you extracted StringBuilder to:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\StringBuilder

Then you should copy the two DLL's to this location. Now you can run StringBuilder.

What's Next?

The core of CrossTalk is mostly complete. We have a few items to complete for 1.0, but most of the remaining pieces are to upgrade the classgen beyond a console application and to create a wizard for the classgen.

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