Xcode Autocomplete current class suggestions first - ios

This is what I currently see when I haven't typed anything
Problem
In the example above, I have a NSTask instance. As I'm new to Cocoa, I don't have all the messages memorized. If I look at the NSTask class reference, I see this:
Question
What I want to see when I autocomplete with nothing typed are NSTask's own methods before NSObject's. I realize I can just bring up the docs to find the names, but I find that switching out of Xcode can break my train of thought. I find myself just typing letters to guess what the message is. In NSTask's case with "launchedTaskWithLaunchPath", I wasn't even close. If I was able to just type [NSTask and push ESC to see static initializers, it would probably save me time.
Is this possible, or is there a way to narrow my scope in the autocomplete dropdown?

Related

How to save user's input

For exm, I enter the text in the app and when I start the app next time, that it is still there. As a planner, notes, etc. I don't know if I should somehow use a button or something similar. I tried to find an answer on the Internet, but I didn't find anything that exactly answered my "problem"
We want to assign the input to a variable, which can later be called. This is done differently in different languages. Often a binding $ is used.

Tools for searching full text in iOS bundle

Sorry for the generalized question...I have been hunting for a long time and haven't found anything I can use or easily adapt yet. I'd really appreciate any pointers!
I'm building a reference app that will contain several textbooks in plain-text format. I want the user to be able to perform a search, and get a table back with a list of results. I have a working prototype, but the search logic that I wrote isn't all that smart and it's been hell trying to make it better.
This is obviously a fairly common problem so I'm looking for a tool that I could adapt to the task. So far I've found Lucene (http://vafer.org/blog/20090107014544/) and Locayta (http://www.locayta.com/iOS-search-engine/locayta-search-mobile/)
Lucene appears to have been last updated for iOS 2...I don't even know if I'll be able to rework it myself. Maybe.
Locayta would probably work great, but a commercial license is $1,000 and I may not soon recoup that with this app, as it's a niche market.
Thanks!
We stumbled upon the same predicament where I work, and have yet to decide on a solution.
Locayta seems promising, but barring that, I've looked into SQLite's FTS3/FTS4 as well.
The only issue seemed the lack of a way to match partial words. It's easy to search for fields that contain whole words (eg. "paper" matches "printer paper", "paper punch", and "sketch paper"), or words that start with something (eg. "bi*" matches "binder", and "bicycle"), but there's no built in way to match a suffix.
If you don't require that functionality, FTS3/FTS4 might work.
I see you mentioned in the follow-up that your SQLite didn't recognize FTS3(), and I had the same issue at first.
Apparently it's not bundled into the iOS version by default, instead you have to download the SQLite3 amalgamation, and include it in the project manually. As found at is FTS available in the iOS build of SQLite?
Also note, the SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS3 variable is not enabled by default, you just have to add it to the configuration as detailed at http://www.sqlite.org/fts3.html#section_2
Hope this helps.
If you can translate plain C code to iOS Objective-C, then Apache Lucy (a loose "C" port of Lucene) might be worth a look.

emailing contents of text fields advice needed xcode

when trying to email contents from text fields im having exceptions thrown. I think im wiring them up wrong.
Im creating outlets for my text fields in .h, setting up my email button as an action.
In .m im implementing usual code for sending email. Ui message frame kit has been imported.
Now I need some help as thats not working for me.
To summarise: How do i email whats in my text boxes?
Im using xcode 4.3 with storyboards
Thanks
There are no tricks to emailing the contents of text boxes. You need help with some exception, you need to provide us the precise error and show us the relevant code. If you want to try to solve it on your own, you should debug the code, single stepping through the method that attempts to email the contents of your text boxes (see Xcode 4 User Guide: Debugging and Analyzing Your Code; see the section about adding breakpoints and then the section about controlling execution).
Exceptions are generally the result of memory management problems (e.g. your code is trying to use some object that has already been released) so you might want to enable zombies if you haven't already. I also think that people do not sufficiently appreciate the value of Xcode's Analyze command on the Product menu (described in the aforementioned Analyzing Your Code section). This Analyze command will identify not only dangling pointers, but also some memory leaks. It's not perfect, but it's a good start.
People really shouldn't be posting questions here if they haven't first resolved the problems raised by Analyze (unless, of course, you need help fixing issues that Analyze raises). Personally, when I went through this Analyze exercise on my first big project, it was painful to clean up all the issues that it identified, but, more importantly, I suddenly "got it". I've been an IT professional for decades, have programmed in dozens (literally) of programming languages, but only after going through this painful exercise did I finally get the subtleties of Objective C memory management. Suddenly, rereading Apple's Advanced Memory Management Programming Guide, it all made perfect sense.
So, if you're still stymied, and the Analyze command did not identify any issues, and you ran the code through the debugger you were not able to identify why the exception was generated, then just provide us a detailed error message and show us the relevant code and I'm sure we'd be happy to help.

How can I access localisable strings for standard iOS system terms (E.g. Favorites, More...)?

I don't know if my approach to this is fundamentally wrong, but I'm struggling to get my head around a (seemingly trivial?!) localisation issue.
I want to display the title of a 'System' UITabBarItem (More, Favorites, Featured, etc...) in a navigation bar. But where do I get the string from? The strings file of the MainWindow.nib doesn't contain the string (I didn't expect it to) and reading the title of the TabBarItem returns nil, which is what stumped me.
I've been told, there's no way to achieve it and I'll just have to add my own localised string for the terms in question. But I simply don't (want to) believe that!! That's maybe easy enough in some languages, but looking up, say, "More" in already presents me with more than one possible word in some languages. I'm not happy about simply sending these words for translation either, because it still depends on the translator knowing exactly which term Apple uses. So am I missing something simple here? What do other people do?
Obviously, setting the system language on my test device and simply looking to see what titles the Tab Items have is another 'obvious' possibility. But I really have a problem with half baked workarounds like that. That'll work for most languages, but I'm really gonna have fun when it comes to Russian or Japanese.
I'm convinced there must be a more reliable way to do this. Surely there must be a .strings file somewhere in the SDK that has these strings defined?
Thanks in advance...
Rich
The simple and unfortunate answer is that aside from a very few standard elements (e.g. a Back button), you need to localize all strings yourself. Yes, UIKit has its own Localization.strings file but obviously that's outside of your app sandbox so you don't have access to it.
I filed a bug with Apple years ago about providing OS-level localization for common button titles, tab item labels, etc. That bug is still open but obviously they haven't done it yet (sorry, I don't have the radar # handy).

Setting up help for a Delphi app

What's the best way to set up help (specifically HTML Help) for a Delphi application? I can see several options, all of which has disadvantages. Specifically:
I could set HelpContext in the forms designer wherever appropriate, but then I'm stuck having to track numbers instead of symbolic constants.
I could set HelpContext programmatically. Then I can use symbolic constants, but I'd have more code to keep up with, and I couldn't easily check the text DFMs to see which forms still need help.
I could set HelpKeyword, but since that does a keyword lookup (like Application.HelpKeyword) rather than a topic jump (like Application.HelpJump), I'd have to make sure that each of my help pages has a unique, non-changing, top-level keyword; this seems like extra work. (And there are HelpKeyword-related VCL bugs like this and this.)
I could set HelpKeyword, set an Application.OnHelp handler to convert HelpKeyword requests to HelpJump requests so that I can assign help by topic ID instead of keyword lookup, and add code such as my own help viewer (based on HelpScribble's code) that fixes the VCL bugs and lets HelpJump work with anchors. By this point, though, I feel like I'm working against the VCL rather than with it.
Which approach did you choose for your app?
When I first started researching how to do this several years ago, I first got the "All About help files in Borland Delphi" tutorial from: http://www.ec-software.com/support_tutorials.html
In that document, the section "Preparing a help file for context sensitive help" (which in my version of the document starts on page 28). It describes a nice numbering scheme you can use to organize your numbers into sections, e.g. Starting with 100000 for your main form and continuing with 101000 or 110000 for each secondary form, etc.
But then I wanted to use descriptive string IDs instead of numbers for my Help topics. I started using THelpRouter, which is part of EC Software's free Help Suite at: http://www.ec-software.com/downloads_delphi.html
But then I settled on a Help tool that supported string ID's directly for topics (I use Dr. Explain: http://www.drexplain.com/) so now I simply use HelpJump, e.g.:
Application.HelpJump('UGQuickStart');
I hope that helps.
We use symbolic constants. Yes, it is a bit more work, but it pays off. Especially because some of our dialogs are dynamically built and sometimes require different help IDs.
I create the help file, which gets the help topic ID, and then go around the forms and set their HelpContext values to them. Since the level of maintenance needed is very low - the form is unlikely to change help file context unless something major happens - this works just fine.
We use Help&Manual - its a wonderful tool, outputting almost any format of stuff you could want, doc, rtf, html, pdf - all from the same source. It will even read in (or paste from rtf (eg MSWord). It uses topic ID's (strings) which I just keep a list of and I manually put each one into a form (or class) as it suits me. Sounds difficult but trust me you'll spend far longer hating the wrong authouring tool. I spent years finding it!
Brian

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