I want to make a small app that displays a PDF, presenting zoom-able single pages with a previous-next page function.
The Core Graphics API is pretty much the same in Cocoa and Cocoa touch. Read up on CGPDFDocument, it should provide you with everything you will need to render PDF pages. You won't need to read the PDF spec or use a library to parse PDF files directly. You will probably to learn more about Core Graphics / Quartz 2D / etc. to understand how to use those functions inside of a Cocoa app.
Based on the gradually evolving Apple policy of rejecting application submissions that duplicate functionality already on the iPhone I would worry about spending too much time even as a newbie on something that is part of the core iPhone feature-set.
This is pretty trivial. The CGPDFDocument functions will allow you to do anything you'd want to do with a PDF file.
The iPhone and iPod touch can view PDFs already, as one of the TV adverts in the UK shows an email with a .pdf attachment (of swimming lessons) being viewed. It can also view .doc, .xls, and so on, so if he is creating a viewer type application then supporting those as well could be a nice feature addition later on.
This means there is a PDF framework on these devices that you will need to access. Presumably Apple can provide support here if he is a paid up developer. Syncing the PDFs to the device is the actual real difficulty, as this isn't supported by iTunes. I assume that you would need to write a network based synchronisation tool, or have an online cloud for holding people's PDFs.
The device doesn't support Flash, so using PDF to Flash conversion tools will not work.
I found this HTML5 framework that should work on an iPad http://bakerframework.com/
but I didn't test it yet.
Related
I'm currently developing an ios app with a lot of audio. I want to release versions in different languages but this means having all the audio in every language, which would take up too much space.
Is there a way to release different versions of the app to the different app stores, including only the relevant audio? Can this be done under one app name/id?
Thanks!
I believe that the short answer is 'no', but there are work arounds.
Each app id has one binary associated with it, although you can change the app name by localisation.
Audio is a resource, so there is no reason not to download it separately from a web server under your control. I don't believe there is any restriction on downloading media.
Alternatively, you can store the audio on Apple's servers and call it downloadable content for a freebie in app purchase.
I think you should use webservices to get the audio files from the server and get the relevant file from the server so this may help you to achieve only the relevant data in the application.
Does anyone know if it is possible to save media from the internet on the local device using Sencha Touch? From what I've seen so far, I understand it's definitely possible to save XML or JSON data locally on the device, but I have had no luck finding ways to store media locally.
To be more specific, I am looking to program an app that provides the user with a series of audio seminars - like podcasts, really. The user would be able to stream those audio files directly from the internet, but I also need to provide the user with the ability to save an episode/seminar for later. This will be important for when a user is traveling and does not have a reliable internet connection or data plan.
The primary delivery device would be on iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) and I would hope to be able to use the same technology on Android devices - but that would be a secondary phase.
If this is possible, how would I go about saving material? And what, if any, would be the limitations on doing so? Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.
I have done something similar using Sencha Touch 1 and PhoneGap to produce a hybrid app.
Basically, I use Sencha Touch to download the JSON, etc and LocalStorage to hold the data. Downloading media/files/etc to the actual device is not supported in Sencha Touch as the framework doesn't have access to a file system.
I then use PhoneGap's API's to tap into the device's native file system and download files to the app's Documents directory and pass the file names/paths to Sencha Touch for use in the app.
I'm assuming you are looking to create a hybrid app based on your question but if this is strictly a web app then there isn't much you can do.
TO add to the above point, you possibly could base64 encode the file and store it within LocalStorage but this isn't a sustainable model as LocalStorage only gives you 5mb of space. If you go over 5mb, the user is prompted (yes, no) to allow LocalStorage to use more space (in 5mb increments). Since the files your reference have the potential to be 5mb each, you can see how this could quickly become unmanageable for both you and the user.
EDIT:
See http://phonegap.com/ for the native wrapper
http://blog.clearlyinnovative.com/post/2056122828/phonegap-plugin-for-downloading-url-all-the-code for the phonegap download plugin
and https://github.com/aaronksaunders/FileDownLoadApp for the code
Check this website out. Scroll down to storing data offline. They discuss Sencha Touch provides a set of data store and proxy classes that make it very easy to work with data from (and going to) a variety of sources - both server- and client-side... hope this helped, cheers.
I have a 10MB QuickTime VR file and I was wondering if it would be possible to play it on an iPod/iPhone/iPad?
I've seen multiple messages about the subject around but nobody could give a straight answer if the iPhone fully support this format, partly support the format or doesn't support the format at all. If this format is supported, which OS version supports it?
Nope, I don't have an iPhone at my disposal to check this, unbelievable right?
Gilad.
It's not possible to use QTVR at all, it's never been developed by apple on iPhone
but there are some other similar object you can use.
take a look at my old answer to a similar:
How to rotate QTVR image 360 degree in iPhone?
There's an app called iPano which views QTVRs, both panoramas and objects. It's ideal for viewing them and it let's you keep a collection of them on your phone. And it's really neat on the iPad too!
Just a quick question on the iphone technology within this business card reader
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8z6pcxdrPo
as we can see this video allows users to take a photo of a business card, i have an idea where i would take a photo of some text , and that photo could then be turned into text on the iphone. how would i be able to implement this using the iOS API ?
cheers guys
The camera stuff is all standard-- use the UIImagePickerController for this.
Text recognition (OCR) is not a built in part of the iOS API, though, so that part really isn't trivial. There are multiple open-source projects that can handle this sort of thing if you want to go after them.
Tesseract is an older but possibly viable one. Check out this post which has info on cross compiling it for iOS.
Other users here might have more current recommendations.
I see that the IPhone core audio does not include audioDevice objects to render audio input directly into RAM. I hear people talking about using files to do this(like speak here) but I am thinking there must be a way to do this otherwise. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Check out the aurioTouch sample in the iPhone Developer site.