Welcome to the Mike Scott Software Web Site. We specialise in consultancy and components for Borland's Delphi and C++ Builder development tools. Here you will find information on our products along with various demos and free downloads.

Last update: Sat 26^th July 1997. Merlin has been released - check out the Hot News below. See the Updates Page for full site update history.

DirectX WorkBench public beta for Delphi and C++ Builder is available in the DirectX Workbench download area.

HOT NEWS: Merlin v1.0 has been released! A fully functional trial version can be downloaded FREE from the Merlin Web site. You can register Merlin on-line and immediately receive two keys, which unlock the trial version by removing the nag screens. Merlin is the Next Generation of John Howe's superb Triplex IDE enhancements, featuring an IDE Wizard Manager and a set of high performance IDE enhancements for Delphi 2, Delphi 3 and C++ Builder. John Howe teamed up with Mike Scott to form The Wizard Factory™ and together they created Merlin.

Merlin also allows wizards to be executed from the Windows 95/NT 4 shell. Several wizards have shell extensions, which add them to the Windows shell's context menu for appropriate file types. For example, right clicking on a folder in Windows Explorer gives the option to do a Merlin Grep search on files in the folder.

Right clicking on an EXE file or DLL gives the option to bring up the Merlin Executable Explorer. This powerful utility lists all the Delphi 3 packages and DLL's required by the EXE or DLL, including all the entry points that are referenced. No longer do you have to guess which DLL's or DPL's your application requires. If the file was built using Delphi 3, it also lists all the units that were used. These are just two of the sixteen wizards that you get with Merlin.

Merlin also ships with the Wizard Development Kit (WizDK) that allows you to write your own wizards very easily. Registered Merlin owners have the right to distribute the Merlin Wizard Manager free with their own wizards, allowing them to be installed in Delphi 2, Delphi 3 and C++ Builder and run from the Windows shell.

Several 3^rd Party Developers have already announced support for Merlin. These include:

• Bob Swart (Dr Bob), who will be releasing a version of his latest set of tools as Merlin Wizards.
• AppVision Software, who are developing a new version of their popular Pumpkin Project Manager as a Merlin Wizard.

FREE: TRex for Delphi 3 is available for download. TRex is a free sample of the sort of IDE enhancements that will be included in Merlin. See the TRex download area.

FREE: DebugLog, a debugging tool for Delphi 2 and 3, is available for free download from right here (15KB).

FREE: Netscape Plugin Framework, an Object Oriented Framework for writing Netscape Navigator Plugins in Delphi. Turn Delphi forms into Plugins for Netscape! Full source code. Download it by clicking here (19KB).

FREE: Named Pipe Components: easily create Named Pipe servers under Windows NT and connection to them from clients on NT and Win95. Includes the ability to transmit Delphi objects over a pipe connection from client to server and vice-versa. Implementation is fully multi-threaded. Full source code for Delphi 2/3. Download by clicking here (24KB).

The Borland Internet Newsgroups have been opened. These are run by Borland and can be found by pointing your newsgroup reader at forums.borland.com. Borland is handing its CompuServe forums back over to CompuServe. They will remain open, but the place to be for TeamB support is now the Internet forums.

Click on any of the products in the graphical menu at the left side of the page to jump to more information.

Mike Scott is a member of Team Borland, known affectionately as TeamB. TeamB is a group of volunteers who provide technical assistance on-line to developers using Borland products. Membership is by invitation only and is extended to people who have a very high level of technical knowledge, good communication skills and who have demonstrated a willingness to provide technical help to their fellow developers in the online community. There are around 65 TeamB members world-wide, the vast majority of whom reside in North America. Mike, however, lives in Edinburgh, Scotland and is proud to be one of the few TeamB members in Europe.

Mike is also very active in providing consultancy to developers and corporate clients who use Borland Delphi, particularly in the areas of Object-Oriented Design & Programming, and Component Design. If you have an interest in Delphi Consultancy, please send email to mikes@compuserve.com.