Toolbar 2000 under Delphi XE?

Question

Does the old Toolbar 2000 package (preferably with the TBX extension) compile and work under Delphi XE?

Are anyone using "Tb2k" and TBX these days?

Answer 1

Do TB2K and TBX compile?

Toolbar2000 does. It is used as part of SpTBX (see below.) TBX I'm afraid I don't know - development ceased a few years ago and I upgraded to SpTBX. I would recommend you do the same - it's actively developed / maintained and you probably won't end up asking questions like this about it in a couple of years (hopefully!)

(I know 'upgrade' wasn't what you asked, sorry. It's what I would recommend. I don't like the situation where I'm using third-party code which is no longer maintained, and I have to take that task upon myself and upgrade it each version.)

Is anyone using TBX?

Most people these days do not use TBX - development on it has ceased. Instead, they use SpTBX, developed by Silverpoint Development. It used to be a patch to TBX (so you'd have three layers: TB2K followed by TBX followed by SpTBX) but these days is directly based on TB2K, so it's only two layers.

The installation instructions are easy to follow, and its installer installs TB2K as well.

SpTBX provides extra controls on top of those provided by TB2K, and also provides skin support. It comes with a skin editor if you want to create your own skins. Many of the ones its shipped with I would never use in commercial software, but the Office 2003- and Office 2007-style skins are excellent.

One of the demo SpTBX applications with the Office 2007 Blue skin

Upgrading from TBX: Most TBX components have direct analogues in the SpTBX library, and renaming them in the DFM and form file and opening the form will be a good start. (Or use GExperts.) Some properties and events have changed or gone, which is annoying. I found I could generally figure out how to achieve the same thing pretty easily - it took a day or so to upgrade a large application for me - but you will find it's not a direct smooth transition.

Answer 2

You can download the 2.2.2 sources and modify them by opening the Delphi 2009 package (tb2k_d11.dpk and tb2kdsgn_d11.dpk) files and saving them as a new name, which creates a new copy. Change the NAME SUFFIX from _d11 to _d15, to follow the existing convention, which is useful although a dated technique. For our purposes d15 in this case means a delphi XE package (delphi version 15.0).

Or you can download my copy, which I did this to already (tb2k22_xe.zip). Just open up the project groups, and install the packages. Note that it seems this code is dual licensed, and to "redistribute" such a trivially modified copy of this code, my changes must be licensed under the GPL, and so, to avoid GPL contamination you should email Jordan Russell and ask for permission to relicense these changes/updates under his Toolbar2000 commercial license, if you wish to use them in a closed source commercial license. Or you can repeat the steps I followed, and avoid GPL contamination. Better still, give Jordan Russell $30 and become a paying customer, and prove that the good-old days are not completely gone, when a guy who wrote a nice component for delphi, got people handing him money, left right and center.

Answer 3

I realize this is an old question.

I am still using TB2K in delphi 5 apps. I've also used TBX in combination.

Some people refuse to use newer delphi versions simply because the old delphi products were almost just as good (not quite but still) since they have an infinitely expandable component system.

Doesn't SpTBXLib and TBX violate the Toolbar 2000 licenses considering that it modifies the TB2K without the permission of Jordan Russell? Or did these products get permision from Jordan Russell to release modifications and patches? This all seems to be jumping through a bunch of annoying hoops that a BSD/MIT style license would solve. Even if SpTBXLib and TBX are violating Russell's terms, he's probably okay with it if someone emails him, but I'm not 100 percent certain - it's a bad assumption to make. These projects should clearly say in their README or on their Github site that they have gotten the permission.

Also, I was one of those people who paid Jordan Russell ... to bring back the good old days of delphi developers paying other developers for their work (instead of GPL cult nonsense where programmers go home starving). The trick would be somehow for Russell to offer it BSD while getting paid still, which might prove difficult. It seems the GPL is actually a way for developers to restrict their software, not to free it up.. what a joke.

Free software foundation = Restrictive Software Foundation

One option would be to make it BSD/MIT and ask for donations, but I doubt Jordan Russell would go for it. Might be worth a try. Or if he is only making a few bucks from this every year, then it would be no big deal to just release it BSD. I'm not sure how many copies he sells per year. It's none of our business - but it sort of is in the sense that we are willing to make improvements to his code and not charge money, so we are part of the source too! May the source be with you.