Borland Delphi Newsgroups

The community of Delphi programmers is very strong and there is a large number of Delphi newsgroups in which they share their experiences and help each other out. If you run into a problem with Delphi that you cannot solve on your own, you can probably find someone who can help you out on one or other of the newsgroups.

Read about newsgroups

Timo Salmi's list of newsgroups

Where are the Delphi Newsgroups?

• Borland Newsgroups The largest set of Delphi newsgroups consists of those prefixed by "borland.public.delphi" and hosted on the Borland servers at newsgroups.borland.com.
• Usenet Newsgroups
• Timo Salmi's list of other, less circulated, often local Pascal newsgroups

Note that posts about Borland's Kylix should be sent to one of the borland.public.kylix.* groups at newsgroups.borland.com.

Before you ask a question

1. Try to solve the problem yourself:
   • Use the Delphi Help files; the more you use them, the more skilled you will become
   • Experiment for yourself. Try out different methods in a simplified test project
   • Study the code in your Delphi examples folder
   • Check out the FAQs (frequently asked questions) and Tips,
     especially the COMP.LANG.PASCAL.DELPHI.MISC Mini-FAQ.
   • Search one or more of the Newsgroup archives. Nine times out of ten, you will find that your question has already been answered many times over.
   • Read through recent newsgroup posts.
   • Don't be a "Help vampire" .
2. Make sure that you understand how newsgroups work
3. Make sure that you know how to ask good questions
   Do not be put off by the frequent use of the term "hacker" on the site. It is used in the sense of "experienced programmer" and the site has clearly written and pertinent advice for anyone using programming newsgroups.

When you ask your question

1. Choose your newsgroup carefully. Make sure that your post is on-topic for the group. Look for posts on similar questions
2. Choose your Subject line carefully. Try to make sure that it clearly indicates the nature of your problem
   Avoid
   • Meaningless subject lines such as
     "'HELP!!!!".
     "Newbie problem"
     "Need help on problem with Delphi"
     "What is wrong with my code?"
   • Long subject lines with the most important bits at the end
   • All capitals. Shouts will be ignored.
   • Multiple exclamation marks (!)
   • The word "urgent". In the eyes of the questioner, most questions are urgent. Do not try to push yourself to the front of the queue.
3. Observe good netiquette
4. Make sure that you include the question in the body of your post, rather than depending on the Subject line
5. Indicate which Delphi version and Windows version you are using.
6. If you think that your code may be at fault, include a stripped down version of the code that shows the problem and is capable of being compiled (unless, of course, the problem is that your code will not compile)
7. Delphi code requires special attention. Make sure that:
   • your code is laid out to show structure with consistent indents
     (avoid using tabs for indents, instead use 2 spaces),
   • you keep the length of each line to less than 72 characters to avoid having the line broken at an inappropriate place,
   • you include a space after any inline comment marker ("//"), to avoid Microsoft's Outlook Express rendering it incorrectly as a URL,
   • no line starting with the word "begin" has 2 blank spaces immediately following the word, otherwise some newsreaders (including Microsoft's Outlook Express) will terminate the post at this point.

Borland's own Newsgroups

These are the borland.public.delphi.* newsgroups hosted on the Borland servers at newsgroups.borland.com.

NOTE:Although Delphi is now being developed by Borland's independant and wholly owned CodeGear division, the Delphi newsgroups are still hosted on the Borland Servers.

This may change in the future.

List of Borland Delphi newsgroups

These newsgroups were set up by Borland (AKA Inprise) to give peer-group support for their Delphi products and these groups are hosted on their own servers.

The advice given on the Borland groups is generally authoritative, and if not, is soon corrected. A number of the users who frequent these groups have been authorized by Borland to add the tag "(TeamB)" to their posting names. These groups are monitored by the members of TeamB and the advice given by them may be regarded as authoritative (but no-one is infallible).

There are around 50 Delphi groups available on newsgroups.borland.com and many others for the other Borland products.

Note that you may see "borland.public.delphi.*" newsgroups on non-Borland servers, along with the Usenet groups. Their use should be avoided.

To find out more about the Borland groups and to subscribe to an original/"genuine" Borland Delphi group go to http://info.borland.com/newsgroups/ng_delphi.html.

Borland's newsgroup guidelines (Especially note the rules regarding multi-posting, cross-posting and over-quoting.)

Usenet Newsgroups

alt.* newsgroups

Although unmoderated, these groups are remarkably free from offensive posts and Spam, although these nuisances do crop up from time-to-time. There is little difference between the three and many messages are cross-posted, with some being multi-posted.

• alt.comp.borland-delphi.
  this may not be a "correctly created" group and is not available on some servers
• alt.comp.lang.borland-delphi (The busiest "alt" group)
• alt.lang.delphi

comp.lang.pascal.delphi.* newsgroups

(from "The weekly FAQ item about the Pascal newsgroups' reorganization" by Timo Salmi.)

• comp.lang.pascal.delphi.advocacy Contentious issues related to Delphi.
• comp.lang.pascal.delphi.announce Delphi related announcements. (Moderated)
• comp.lang.pascal.delphi.components.misc General component issues.
• comp.lang.pascal.delphi.components.usage Using pre-written components.
• comp.lang.pascal.delphi.components.writing Writing Delphi components.
• comp.lang.pascal.delphi.databases Database aspects of Borland Delphi.
• comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc General issues with Borland Delphi.
  

  A quite active group.

Please duly observe the good netiquette in the Pascal newsgroups. For example, please note that, while posting source code snippets of reasonable length is welcome, you should not post binaries or binary attachments (uuencoded, mimed, base64:d, HTML, multi-part, word-processor or similar files) to these newsgroups. If you have such material to show or share please make it available at an FTP or WWW location and post only the pointer. In the Pascal newsgroups only use straight ASCII text.

borland.public.delphi.* newsgroups on non-Borland servers

The borland.public.delphi.* groups should not appear on non-Borland servers so please only use those on newsgroups.borland.com and NEVER post to a borland.public.delphi.* group on a non-Borland server.

Some newsgroup providers copy the messages for selected groups from the Borland servers to their own servers and then allow them on to the Usenet propagation mechanism. This creates a problem in that Borland do not copy back onto their servers any posts made directly to other servers. The result is that if you make a post to a borland.public.* group using a non-Borland server, it will not appear on the Borland servers and so not be seen by those who use them. Since most TeamB members (and many others) restrict themselves to the Borland servers, this will mean that any post you make to a borland.public.* group on a non-Borland server is unlikely be seen by those in the best position to help.

The only time that you should consider using the borland.public.delphi.* groups on a non-Borland server is if you are seriously seeking help and have not had an answer to a post to the appropriate group on newsgroups.borland.com. In such a case, if your normal newsgroup provider lists the group, it may be worthwhile checking it out in case a replier has sent their reply to a non-Borland server.

In any event, the borland.public.* groups on non-Borland servers should most definitely be regarded as "read-only".

Not all of the 50 or so Delphi groups available on the Borland servers are copied onto the non-Borland servers.

Other Delphi newsgroups on Usenet

There are a number of Usenet newsgroups, other than those listed above, which you may be able to access via your newsreader. Some of these may be intended for speakers of languages other than English.

Search in your newsreader's Subscribe to Newsgroups dialog for "delphi". What you will see will depend upon what what is available from your newsgroup provider(s) and many of the groups shown may have nothing at all to do with Borland's Delphi.

Newsgroup archives :

• http://www.tamaracka.com/search.htm
• http://groups.google.com