I am no Charles TDickensionary<>

- or a few TDictionary<> tricks.

One of my favourite classes in Delphi is TDictionary<> - might be because it resembles a database table which can have composite keys, and I have always been a ClientDataset/VirtualTable/FDMemTable fan-boy :)

I do not get to use the memTables that much i recent years, and the RTL generic collections also got better - while not on par with third party collections like Spring4D - which I also not get to use much.

I recently had a task where I had to transform some code that was collecting data from an external source, that provided data in a way that multiple iterations had to be done, before each row/item was complete - since data was coming in subsets per field/property. TDictionary<> to the rescue.

TTreeview your TOutline

- or migrating a TOutline to a TTreeview many years too late.

HighDPI themed Delphi 10.4 TOutline and TTreeview

The task to migrate from a working old TOutline to a TTreeview was long overdue in a small program I almost use daily - and its code had not really been touched since it was created.

TOutline was included in Delphi 1 back in the Win 3.1 days, and since Windows did not have any Treeview/Outline in its common controls it was purely VCL, not a wrapper.

It has for many years been advised to not use TOutline for any new projects, but instead use TTreeview or similar - but once in a while I do bump into this component - and this time I thought I would write a small and incomplete migration guide.