I'm trying to make an application that can share data between OS X and iOS using the multipeer connectivity framework. From what I understand I need two applications, one for OS X and one for iOS if I want them to communicate data both ways. Would they both have to be made with obj-c or can I make the iOS app using swift and the OS X with obj-c?
You can use either language on either platform. The multipeer framework can be called from Swift or Objective C and any combination will work.
In fact, it is possible to use the exact same code on both platforms by setting up a workspace with targets for iOS and OSX and common code included in both.
Related
I have a library which consumes a FILE * and outputs data to another FILE *.
I want to handle both the input to this library and the output from this library in memory without reading/writing to/from a file on the disk.
We're doing this in iOS - so running the library as a separate app and using stdin/stdout isn't (as far as I know) a viable option.
Because ObjC is a superset of C, all you have to do is #import/#include <stdio.h> to gain access to the funopen() which in itself contains the functions readfn, writefn, seekfn, and closefn. And fwopen which has an example showing how to write to two streams at this other SO question.
Mac OSX and iOS don't include fmemopen and open_memstreambecause they are apparently unportable linux functions
As of macos 10.13, ios 11.0, tvos 11.0, and watchos 4.0, fmemopen and open_memstream along with a few other helpful POSIX.1-2008 standard functions are available in stdio.
Have a look at https://github.com/shyuep/pyhull/tree/master/src/fmemopen, I've tested it myself on a Mac OSX 10.8.2 and it is working ok.
Author states it should also work on iOS.
When you read the Class Reference of every object of iOS, you will find:
Available in iOS 2.0 and later.
There are a program or a way to list all function and the minimum iOS system?
How can I know if the iPhone with iOS 3.0 will run all iOS function? I can check it in runtime with respondToSelector, but can be more easy with source code?
Set your project's base SDK to iOS 3, and see if it builds.
AFAIK there is no way to list all the APIs you use in your app into one list and check that you are building past the minimum for all those APIs. You will just have to check each one, one by one. Highlight the API in Xcode, and then click escape and it will tell you very easily.
But also I have to mention that this won't be extremely necessary since you should test on the minimum OS you are building for and if it crashes at any point then you have your issue for that certain API.
I'm completing a project for the iPhone entirely written in Objective-C. I'd like to port this for Android too.
While the user interface of the iPhone and the Android OS are very different and will need different code, can I some how import the core of my code (ie. the black box that does the thinking) as is to Android as part of some Java code?
I have no familiarity with bridging between Objective-C and Java even though I have written in both.
You got luck! Phil Hassey has recently ported his own game from iPhone to Android within a week and wrote up what he did steps by steps. Here is his journey: http://www.philhassey.com/blog/2010/08/03/porting-galcon-using-the-android-ndk/
You could have a look at Apportable which allows to generate an Android app from an existing Objective-C code base. See this article too.
there is a fork of the gcc that supports objective-c on the android by patching the NDK on
http://code.google.com/p/android-gcc-objc2-0/. But it's considered beta at the moment and i'm not sure if jni/java bridges are already implemented
I have been doing a lot of work on this front — for example by creating my own C++ base framework that does not depend on STL (called Platform Core) and writing the core of the next version of my iOS app with that, so that I can easily port it to Android and whatever else has a C++ compiler and strikes my fancy.
I suggest having a (ick, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but eh), ahem, having a C++ core (there, I said it!) so it can be easily ported.
First of all, is this possible?
If so:
What challenges would I encounter in making an XCode imitation for iPhone/iPod development for Windows or Linux?
I was thinking about using gcc as the actual compiler for the objective-c and (VB).NET for the IDE. Will that work?
It doesn't need to compile to iPhone OS until it is to be tested on the device or submitted to the app store. Perhaps it will be easier to compile to the local OS format (Windows or Linux) until "prime-time".
Is this concept possible? Comments? Ideas of how to implement?
If you wanted to support all of UIKit and Cocoa Touch, the problems would be insurmountable. You'd spend 2 years trying to get off the ground and then give up, while everyone else had fun developing apps for the iPhone and iPad and other devices. You would regret even trying it.
But if you wanted to create your own framework for making iPhone apps, built immediately on top of OpenGL, it might be possible. You would create a simulator that renders to an OpenGL view, and the final app would also render everything in an OpenGL view, touching none of UIKit. You would use pure C, or some robust cross-platform language like Lua, compiled or even interpreted. Incidentally, that's more or less how the Corona framework does it: built on top of OpenGL, touches little of the iPhone SDK, uses compiled Lua. They developed their own simulator, which only runs on OSX, but could probably relatively easily be ported to Linux.
You could even use Objective-C as the language, and make available a carefully chosen subset of the Cocoa API's by using (the iPhone compatible parts of) GNUstep Base. Then users could use standard classes like NSString.
Still, all of this is mostly interesting as a thought experiment, unless you got a team together to work on this as an Open Source project. It's harder than you think. Your simulator wouldn't be able to emulate the way that memory warnings are generated on the iPhone, for example.
If someone wants to develop iPhone apps on Linux, it makes more sense to just write the whole app in C/C++ using OpenGL, and then basically just smack that code onto a vanilla iPhone OpenGL project. That's the fastest path. The next possibility would be to use another language, which is also not too hard. But an "iPhone IDE" on top of that would be little more than putting an iPhone-like frame around the OpenGL view in Linux.
Actually, Felixyz touched on something your should take a look at. See: http://www.gnustep.org/ . They have binaries for just about every variant of *nix, OS X, and windows. The site claims "GNUstep seeks to be source code compatible with Cocoa and OpenStep, it can thus be used to develop and build cross-platform applications between Macintosh (Cocoa), Unix and Windows." It would be a good jumping off point for such a project,
I doubt all OSX's functionality is covered by GNUStep, but it's a start.
I'd imagine to develop iPhone/iPod apps on an alternate platform, you'd need to get Apple's includes (Legality is likely to be an issue), and apply all their toolchain patches, plus a million other things I'm probably overlooking.
What would be a better project is implementing the missing functions in GNUStep to support OSX apps seamlessly under the host platform. Maybe then you could run xcode native on your desired OS.
What is the difference between carbon and cocoa ? For what type of applications we should use carbon and for what type of applications we should use cocoa ? Which is the best of both for developing applications in Mac OS ?
Short answer: For a new application, use Cocoa. Some legacy code may still use Carbon and if you don't need any new capabilities, it will continue to work.
Cocoa has an Objective-C API, and can be accessed from C and C++ code easily. Carbon is a pure-C API. There are both Cocoa and Carbon bindings for many other popular languages, but there are often some limitations.
Carbon is evolved from the original API for the original Apple Macintosh (and Apple Lisa) in the early 1980s. Specifically, when Mac OS X was released, Apple was unable to support some of the legacy Mac OS API functions, but provided a subset of legacy APIs called "Carbon", to ease the transition for developers who had pre-Mac OS X applications. They added thousands of new APIs and continued to fully support Carbon for several years, before finally deprecating it more recently. They have always said that Carbon is a dead-end and all developers should move to Cocoa.
Cocoa has evolved from the NextStep framework that Apple acquired and used as the basis to create Mac OS X. It's the "native" API for Mac OS X and the only way to access some of the newest capabilities.
Carbon was created to ease the movement to and from Mac OS 8 and 9. If your code needs to run under OS 8 or 9, then Carbon is the way to go. (Source)
However, if your software is designed for OS X, then you should emphasize Cocoa over Carbon.
Carbon is deprecated (it does not and will not exist in 64-bit).
For new application development, use Cocoa (I'm talking about native OS X application development the Apple-sactioned way. Obviously other alternative choices exist, such as Java, Python, Ruby, etc, which may be effective depending on your project type if a native UI is not required)
It depends on the scope and the functions of the application you're going to develop.
I'm going to be building an application that makes use of MacInTalk capabilities and the new OSX 10.7 international set of voices. The official documentation states that fine-tuning is provided only under Carbon APIs, while Cocoa APIs are more limited.
Specifically, these Speech channel settings are alterable via API in Carbon: rate, pitch, pitch modulation and volume attributes. This possibility seems to be unavailable via Cocoa.
On a side note, the most updated documentation of the Speech Synthesis Programming Guide dates back to 2006 and it might be the case that Cocoa access to the same functionality is out there, but it's not yet documented.