I'm writing a Cocoa Touch program that will (hopefully) use Libpurple as it's background. The only problem is that I have no clue where to get started. I've been looking through some source code of applications that do use it, but so far haven't gotten anywhere.
Does anyone know anything that will help me familiarize myself with libpurple?
First of all, you may encounter some trouble, since libpurple is licensed under GPLv2. It may be incompatible with what you are trying to do. (I am not totally sure you can have a GPLv2 app on the App Store.)
Second, you can read purple-client-example.c in the libpurple source, for a super-short example.
Also, Adium might be more useful to study than Pidgin since it is a Mac OS X app, closer to what you might do on the iPhone.
The best way to understand libpurple is to work with Pidgin, the OSS client that uses it. Study the Pidgin implementation, then start to design your own client.
If you plan to sell this, you cannot use libpurple because it is under the GNU license. Please check out my alternative AIM API for Objective-C, with a bit of tweaking, it will probably work moderately well on iPhone: LibOrange
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I am writing an iPhone app, and I have a remote server that will deliver content. I would like to have my app poll the server once per day to see if there is new content, even if it's not running or in the background. I would also like to do this without setting up an APNS. Any advice?
You can't do that, either when your 'not' running or if you are running in the background. The best you could do is to download once per day when your app is first run / pushed to the foreground.
You could use remote notifications to "prompt" the user to bring the app to the foreground so that it could download something?
With the current apple IOS guidelines, that is about the best you can do.
I read that you are trying to avoid using APNS, but I am wondering if you are trying to avoid it for the right reasons, especially when it is designed to efficiently solve the scenario you are describing. I've seen many developers seek alternative solutions to APNS simply because the technology appeared to be complex to use after looking at Apple's documentation. The online documentation does go into a lot of details, right down to the binary protocol level.
But just to be sure you know, there are open-source libraries whose only purpose is to shield you from all these technical details. Some libraries are more complex than others, but some are remarkably user-friendly. If you have not done so already, you might like to take a look at JavaPNS and other similar projects.
I've been developing for quite a while but while I consider myself competent (or better) with C++, Java, C# & AS3/Flex in areas from web-servers to desktop applications to 3D games, I'm aware all these languages are pretty similar; even on the libraries side I know what to look for based on using libraries that do similar things in another language.
But Objective C I understand to be a different kettle of fish, and developing for mobile devices has always struck me as likely to be hard work since you have to develop on your PC and test on the actual device itself - my experience developing for PS2 put me off such things due to poor debuggers and other tools.
What's the reality? Is it a paradigm shift to move from web-servers and desktop apps and rich web-clients to iPhone... or for an experienced developer is it just another language to learn and new libraries to play with? Is there anything to be scared about at all?
edit: My main question on Obj-C specifically was if it's a different way of programming, like it would be moving to Haskell from Java for instance. It sounds this is not the case.
For starters, ObjC is fairly easy to grasp so long as you focus on the fundamentals. Don't worry about the syntax, there's not much there above C which I will presume you already are familiar with. There are excellent books out there this book is the definitive guide I recommend to most new users, Erica Sadun also has a good book on iPhone development, I recommend both of these highly.
Secondly, the tools aren't hard to use, and you will be pleasantly surprised with the debugger and other tool integration. Instruments was a long time coming, but it's indispensable for catching things like memory leaks, cpu time usage, and now power consumption.
But really, nothing to be scared about, and as for another platform to learn; well, yes and no. There is always going to be another thing to learn, regardless of iPhone or something else. Don't resist. :)
There's definitely a "paradigm shift" (ugh, buzzwords):
You don't have all the memory in the world (and there's no swap either)
You don't have all the CPU time in the world
You probably don't want a binary bigger than about 20 MB (the size that can be downloaded over the cell network)
You can't just change the server backend to make things right.
Graphic design is important if you want to be successful (but you don't want to bloat your app)
Web requests take a while (a website with redirects feels really slow compared to the desktop beside it).
JavaScript animations are painfully slow (ever tried the Google Maps website on an iPhone?)
UI design is heavily constrained by the size of the user's finger (even though the iPhone 4 has a comparatively huge screen).
UI design is really tedious.
The user can do more things than clicking and typing.
I find that the biggest difference is in the UI, not in the language. Languages are easy. Libraries require a little reading/searching/asking around, but then they're easy. UI design and UI programming are very difficult to do well.
Objective C is different but not far removed from normal OO methods. The syntax was the larger barrier for me.
The problem I saw was/is you learn ObjC for iPhone, and you can't take the skill (ObjC knowledge) outside the Applesphere really. I haven't seen a use for it. I have a handful of books I went through to get my feet wet. Some of these, the Apress books, contained errors in the code walkthroughs causing me to Google the book errata countless times.. so be careful of that, if you learn that way.
Also, unless this has changed, you can only develop under OSX with the SDK tools because no Windows version exists to my knowledge.
With that, you also have to play by Apples development rules to get published into the AppStore, which has had its share of dev horror stories.
That said, a working app is fun and beautiful in the end.
On a scale of 1 to 10, it's about a 6.
Apple does use Objective C and it is different then normal C. So Iphone and IPad development can be hard if you've never used Objective-C before. If you are familiar at all with a language called SmallTalk, then Objective-C will be very easy for you to pick up.
Now other mobile devices, such as Android, uses Java. If you are competent in Java then Android development may be easier for you.
Some devices use Windows Mobile. If you are a .NET programmer, you can use .NET compact framework to develop Windows Mobile Apps.
Just so you know too, most mobile SDKs come with an emulator to test your app on. So if you don't have an iPhone, for example, you can still test your app with the emulator. I understand that the emulator is supposed to be 99% as accurate as an actual device
I don't think there's anything to be scared of.
The simulator's pretty alright, even if it can't handle some things - it's hard to simulate the accelerometer, for instance!
Once you're over the hurdle of figuring out what certs you need and setting up the iPhone development account and such, it's fine.
It's a bit of a pain writing something, loading it on the device, trying it out, etc., but the fact that you can actually debug the code running on the device makes it rather a lot nicer than it could be. (I had to maintain an application for the Nokia 9110, and there I had to edit, compile, load, run, crash blindly, stare at code, guess, edit, compile, etc.)
As a long time Windows C++ / .NET developer, I didn't find it very difficult to begin developing in Objective C.
There are some syntax differences that take some getting used to, but in general it similar enough to C/C++ to not feel like a completely new language.
Learning the library code and what you can and can't do easily seems like the larger challenge to me, which is going to be a challenge with any new platform.
I am writing a beginner book called Hello! iPhone, and I've made a mailing list of beginner tips to help people get started. After a week or so of tips, you'll be much more equipped to check out other books and understand the basics a bit better to judge.
http://loufranco.com/beginner-iphone-programming-tips/
It will take you through Hello, World and some other simple stuff (Outlets and Actions, basic memory management, etc).
I want to add something (eg. the related city name) into the UI view when I make a phone call or received a phone call on iPhone. However, I can't figure out a good solution for this idea. Could anyone who has experience on this subject gives me some suggestions?
My currently solution is, try to write an extension based on mobile substrate and hook functions in SpringBoard. So many difficulties existed and following are my current big questions,
How to develop such a extension? I downloaded some examples from google, unfortunately they cann't even be compiled on my toolchain.
I can't figure out which ui view for the related screen I should use to insert my own component. I get header files of SpringBoard via class-dump, but no docs and no comments about its usage. Could someone share his discoveries with me?
How to build a trusted cross-compiling enviroment on leopard? All kinds of confusing errors pop up when I try to build others's codes. I've tried Zdziarski's instrunctions in his book, it works with iPhone OS 1 and can compile common projects with open sdk, but how should I do to make it works when comipiling ms plugins?
Also, is there any other solution to translate my ideas to codes? I start iPhone development one month ago, no experience with cocoa/Obj-C before. So your suggestions are very appriciated.
~ Link Bian (卞林扣)
Email/MSN: linkou.bian#gmail.com
I think you are asking for too much. It wont be possible to manipulate incoming/outgoing call screens. Ethically, that is.
Zdziarski is a hacker and from his book, you will get many undocumented API calls which will make Apple reject your app. Same goes for Erica Sadun's iPhone Developer's Cookbook.
Something that really helped me get dylibs compiled was using SkylarEC's Xcode template and just appended an extension of '.dylib' onto the binary and sshing it into /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries. I suggest hooking SBCallAlert or SBCallAlertDisplay to get the id of the caller which is usually just an NSString. Play around with it a little bit, those are all the visualizing methods of a call. If you put in an nslog in your custom override method, you can view the output in iPhoneConfgurationUtilitie (windows) or the console in Xcode. From there you would most likley need an index of area codes to comare the callers to. I don't believe you can add subviews to the call, on I intercept and reissue the strings for the views already there.
But you know, apple doesn't like this :P
lemme know if this helps
I need to build an application which will run on OS X, polling for data, and displaying that data full-screen in a purty, graphical way - generally "identifier: value" text in some sort of tabular format, but possibly with spark-lines to display historical changes, and "animations" (nothing fancy, just fading text and similar) to show updates.
However, I've no idea where to get started. I've no experience with desktop application development or development on a mac.
Where/at what should I be looking for OS X development information which will get me quickly up-to-speed (coming from a web-dev background)?
For OS X development, and a really nice overview that will get you writing actual applications quickly, I'm not sure anything can match Aaron Hillegass' book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X.
It's considered by many to be the Bible of Cocoa programming, and it is example driven. You are writing applications that you can actually run throughout.
It is useful, although not as much so, for iPhone development, which you don't mention in your question, but you do in your tags.
If you really want to go native with OS X that will mostly mean learning Objective-C and Cocoa. You get started by becoming an Apple Developer Connection (ADC) member and downloading XCode. Inside the ADC site there is a lot of information that will help you get started, Objective C reference, sample code, etc. .
Depending on your background you might want to consider using Adobe Air for your application, if you know Flex or Flash that might be easier for you to learn.
There are also a couple of question already up on stackoverflow on this subject https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=learn+cocoa
Take a look at http://www.realsoftware.com. It's a cross platform development environment. Easy to learn, established user community, lot's of sample, shared code to get you started.
Can anyone recommend a good task management application for PC? I used to use Palm Desktop and loved it but now I use a Black Berry and Outlook at work, however I find Outlook's task functionality fairly painful to use. Going back to Palm Desktop could work but I really just need something that does tasks management very well and is not too heavyweight.
On my Mac at home I've been looking at OmniFocus which seems fairly decent but it is a Mac only application and I really need something for the PC I use at work.
Google Calendar supports tasks (new feature, very bare bones), or you can use the RememberTheMilk site/gmail add-on. It's has all the basic features you could ever want and it's simple to use. If you use an iPhone or the gPhone you can access the website in a 1st class experience from both your desktop and your pocket.
Here is a very simple and intuitive tree based task list.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/applications/todolist2.aspx Comes free with source code and many plug-ins
I quite like Life Balance from Llamagraphics. I used to use it on my palm and then treo.
But it also works on Mac and PC (and IPhone). I don't think there is a blackberry version.
It can be used as a basic todo list, but it also has some nice outlining features and a nice way of setting priorities. The IPhone version is still a bit clunky compared to the Palm version, but it's usable. All the versions can synch with each other and on the Mac it has some synch capability with iCal.
I've actually started using Evernote and a Moleskin Journal for tracking what I work on from day to day. Although Evernote is a note taking application it is general enough and has tags which seems enough for general task management.