I need a C++ library that runs on Android and iOS which can be used to create PDF documents.
So far I have found libHaru:
libHaru is a free, cross platform, open source library for generating PDF files.
The library seems fine and I already found a working example on how to use it with iOS.
But I would like to have a library less "low level", because in libHaru you have to manually create new pages, line breaks etc. So the question is if someone can advice me any C++ library which can run on Android and iOS and is a little bit more high level.
As a bonus: It would be great, if that library is also free (as in freedom) or at least free to use.
Edit: I have tried Qt and it is rather clumsy to use in such an early development stage (regarding iOS and Android development). I would appreciate a stable library with good documentation provided.
You can use Qt for that. The class you would be looking for is QPdfWriter The nice thing about it is, that as you draw onto that thingy, you can replace the QPdfWriter with different kinds of QPaintDevices, like QWidget or QImage and so forth. It's very generic and high level, but Qt is also quite big.
I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask this question so if it isn't please let me know and I will move it. I am looking to create a game for both Android and iPhone platform. I know Unity is a great game engine and my question is how well does it work for creating one code base to build for both Android and iPhone platforms? Time is a constraint on this project so I am very interested in how smoothly the process usually is when trying to build both applications and how much custom code must be written for each specific application. Any insite that people have on this topic would be much appreciated thanks.
Unity, as implied by it's very name, is designed explicitly to facilitate such multi-platform development in little time. You can for example define for each platform what the max size of each texture is, and it will automatically resize them for you when you build for that target platform - the build process really simple too. Since both your platforms are touch devices, it should be easy to have just one code base working seamlessly for both platforms (and more if needed), with very few custom code for each platform.
Unity has a no-questions-asked 30 day trial of the Android and (I think) iOS versions - I encourage you to try them and see for yourself how little time it will take you to have a proof of concept build for both platforms.
is there a plugin for designing android layouts in photoshop? Creating android XML layouts is unnecessarily tedious (especially with having to type "android:" for every parameter, and typing out the layout parameters on every function when they might as well be auto-included when you begin the opening tag for that element), this is a factor of the tools available.
I'm sure people pride themselves in typing it out, but remember HTML elitists that brag about coding in notepad? Analogy: You CAN use a wrench a to drive a nail into wood, but there are better tools.
I imagine that photoshop's slice tool and html export tool could EASILY be configured to save for android XML, layers could be RelativeLayouts with the positioning intact. Has anybody done this already?
try this tool, not perfect, but usable:
http://www.droiddraw.org/
Why can't you use the ADT plugin in eclipse? The latest version released a few weeks ago includes a pretty good graphical editor.
I was using opencv for some time for programming in Android, and I now see that the Gimp library is much stronger. Where can I find a starting point to learn Gimp?
I also want to know the basic concepts behind of Gimp plugins. In the past, I used C APIs in opencv. How could I write the code for android?
Also, what packages do I need to install in windows to start using Gimp?
ALthough GIMP dows have some standalone libraries that perform some image manipulation, most image manipulation is done either by GIMP's core program or through GIMP's plug-ins. Both approaches need to have the entire program installed and running (though not necessarily usin a display).
I know nothing on Andorid progrmaing, and don't knwo how can one install ordinary native code in C and call it from Android apps - if you are very familiar with it, you might have a chance in your attempt.
However GIMP itself relies on a extensive ecosystem of libraries, including, but not limited to, glib, gtk+, cairo, pango, gegl - and each of these in turn might have other pre-requisites. Since Windows does not have a working package manager to authomatically install libraries and header files of these various libraries, working with these natively on Windows, though the code of each of them is multiplatform and can run on Windows and other OSses,is very hard. So hard that hthe people who build GIMP for Windows themselves do so in a Linux environment, from where they cros-compile GIMP for Windows.
Making all of these libraries work on an Android is probably not hard if you are using the GNU ecosystem around the Android's Linux kernel , and not just the bare Android environment (I don't know enough about android to even know if that is possible).
All in all: it will be though for you, and demand a whole lot of research.
One of GIMP's libraries, the GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) has a lot less prerequistes, and can be used as an ordinary library. I think you can probably build it with just glib and Babl as prerequisites. This is the library that will replace current's GIMP core, and reimplement the operations of most existing plug-ins -- so it might be enough for you.
If you can get GEGL running and usable from an Android system share that with the World --it would be , in itelsef, a project worth of a Google Summer of Code project. (And still would be about an order of magnitude easier than getting GIMP code in there to be used as a library from other applications).
Finally -- if you want just a couple of GIMP's effects, if the effect is implemented as a Plug-in in GIMP, the plug-ins' code is quite straightforward. So, while it would be hard to get the whole GIMP environment inside Android, copying the functions that actually perform the pixel manipulation from GIMP's source tree and converting them to work in a java method inside your app would not be hard. Just remember to comply with the license in this case: GIMP's plugins code is under GPLv3. (the GEGL library is only LGPL)
In short: no, you can't use GIMP's "libraries" as native code from an Android app -if you can use OpenCV, you have a good chance of being able to use GEGL instead. Only orting the algorithms of certain plugins to manipulate pixels in your app would be easier.
However -- if your application would allow delegating Image Processing to an internet based server, setting up an HTTP application to receive a image, use GIMP to process it, and stream it back would be a simple thing to do.
(So, you could not apply effects in real time, but would allow one to, for example, take a photo, select a series of effects from menus, and send it to the server for processing)
GIMP uses quite a bit of memory when loading brushes. If you drop all of the useless plug-ins, and build it from source. You may be able to get it working but you will have to build ALL of the linked libraries directly into the executable.
In other words; build linked libraries directly into the code as a static build. In this manner things may function properly unless one of those linked libraries call another linked library.
Getting the libraries themselves to work on the OS may provide additional programs opportunities to use them. Additionally, GTK+ (GIMP Tool Kit), GIMP's interface is also rather bloated and ugly.
If all else fails, you'll simply have to settle for a smaller program with the features you're looking for on the fly ( Levels, Curves, the clone tool, dodge and burn, etc. ) Layers are also nice, but editing a a large megapixel image begins to eat up memory rather quickly and most android device don't have a swap partition.
I'm just starting out in app development and have a board game concept that I would like to visualize before coding it.
Which free ware would you recommend that I use and then afterwards maybe even port assets and other resources to my Eclipse Android IDE?
The key thing for me right now is to have a tool I can use to make and see the game :-O
If it happens to generate simple java code,that'd be great ;-)
If it's a plugin editor for eclipse that'd be superb :-)
And lastly has anyone ever used Java Ascii Versatile Editor for this purpose?
BTW there's a fantastic eclipse free hand drawing resource called Sketch currently in development.
Have you tried Google's AppInventor?
I'm not quite sure what you mean with the term "visualize"
If you are refering to graphics - maybe with some animations - than inkscape might be a good tool. It creates vector graphics as SVG (which allows scripting for simple animations).
SVG also has the advantage that you can render it easily to PNG at various resolutions.