What does iCloud display sets give me that I can not get from just filling in the entitlements - icloud

When you create an iPhone/iPad version of an app, and also an OS X version of that same app, you would presumably want to have all the different devices share document or key-value data over iCloud. This can be easily accomplished by putting the same bundle identifier in the iCloud entitlements for all apps. This being the case, why would I ever want to use iCloud Display Sets.
I have seen this question asked here before, but in my opinion they were not properly answered. This question asked the same question, but the answer just confirmed that display sets are for allowing multiple apps to access the same iCloud store. We can already do that without display sets.
Does anyone know if there is a difference or a benifit in doing it through display sets, or if it is just an alternative method?

From the docs (emphasis mine):
If you create multiple apps, you can use the same display set for your apps or assign different display sets to each. For example, if you create a lite version of your app, in addition to a full-featured version, you might use the same display set for both versions because they create and use the same basic data files. Each app should recognize the file types stored in its mobile data folder and be able to open them.
If you had "lite" and "full" versions that both ran on iOS, they could not use the same bundle ID, so keeping the same bundle ID is not a viable strategy there. This would apply to any situation in which there were multiple versions of the same app available on the same platform.

Related

OS X Yosemite Spotlight extensions

Is it possible to extend spotlight's search feature to support additional commands?
For example, is it possible to define custom web search aliases, meaning I could type yt and it would provide results from youtube.
Alternatively, is it possible to add additional system commands were I could type sl (or some variant) to put my computer to sleep.
In the meantime there is Flashlight (The missing plugin system for Spotlight) http://flashlight.nateparrott.com/
This is expandable with Python scripts.
UPDATE Oct 2016 It seems that Flashlight is not longer maintained. The last update was more then a year ago. Check the repo here: https://github.com/nate-parrott/Flashlight
UPDATE Mar 2017 There is a fork which is still maintained: github.com/w0lfschild/Flashlight – Thanks #amoebe
No it is not possible, there are only 4 types of extensions for OS X Yosemite:
Today - Get a quick update or perform a quick task in the Today view of Notification Center
Share - Post to a sharing website or share content with others
Action - Manipulate or view content within the context of another app
Finder - Present information about file sync states directly in Finder.
All of these extension types are explicitly activated by the user for functionality. Apple has said that they are just getting started with extensions and plan to add more in the future, so logically it seems that Spotlight extensions are next (goodbye Alfred :sadface:).
I have an alternate solution for you which I am currently using. It's native to the OS and does not require disabling System Integrity Protection in order to install Flashlight.
Using Automator to create a new Service. Then with Ask For Text node you can display a popup similar to spotlight. From there the possibility are numerous. For web search there is a command like Display Webpages. The top activate AppleScript command is for gaining focus of the following popup.
You can construct the URL from your input text using JavaScript node. You can parse "yt" to YouTube search url for example and put the rest after the space to the URL.
Then in Preference you can set this new service as a shortcut for easier access.

Alter the appearance of NPC player entities to have a specific skin

I'm creating a bukkit plugin that's making a world in Minecraft outside the ordinary and that includes having NPCs (bots) entities that look like actually players and not villagers. I've already got the bots working programming wise but I want to have each bot have a different skin based upon it's name. Can I do this with maybe a resource pack or something? currently they take the names of Minecraft players with the same name but I'd like to override this.
TL;DR
Can I change the appearance of player entities by name with:
a Resourcepack?
a server side command?
playerConnection.sendPacket?
This is currently not possible without modifications to the client. If you want to, you can use Spoutcraft, but this requires users of the plugin to have the Spoutcraft launcher for the textures to show correctly.
There's no way to do this with the vanilla client, however, short of buying a bunch of Minecraft accounts and assigning them appropriate skins.
You should try out the DisguiseCraft plugin for a quick fix. DisguiseCraft is currently available on the Bukkit website. Do keep in mind that it also requires ProtocolLib to function properly, and you will need to have both installed on your server. You may find a link for ProtocolLib through the DisguiseCraft page. I currently use the two on my server and have had no issues with functionality.
If you would prefer a more direct approach however, since you are coding your own plugin, consider looking over the Lib's Disguises Developer API. Like DisguiseCraft, it too requires ProtocolLib, but the source for Lib's is publicly available and is intended to target developers. Just like DisguiseCraft, you may find a link for ProtocolLib through the Lib's page.

File preview component (C++/MFC)

Is anyone aware of a good, general purpose file preview component for MFC/C++ desktop applications?
Specifically, I'm looking for a component that I could embed in my application that would allow a broad range of file types (text files, multimedia, etc.) to be previewed without the need for original applications (such as MS Word, etc.) to be installed.
I could only find one, via Google:
http://www.file-viewer-sdk.com/
Unfortunately, these folks want $60k for unlimited redistribution, which is outside of our budget.
Anyone have any recommendations? If not a component, is anyone using another general-purpose strategy that works well for them?
You can write your own shell preview host once you know the interfaces.
You might want to check out Autovue, originally made by Cimmetry since acquired by Oracle
.
Our product makes limited use of their SDK to do some document conversions (Mostly RTF->PS) and that works well enough for us.

Is there a database implementation that has notifications and revisions?

I am looking for a database library that can be used within an editor to replace a custom document format. In my case the document would contain a functional program.
I want application data to be persistent even while editing, so that when the program crashes, no data is lost. I know that all databases offer that.
On top of that, I want to access and edit the document from multiple threads, processes, possibly even multiple computers.
Format: a simple key/value database would totally suffice. SQL usually needs to be wrapped, and if I can avoid pulling in a heavy ORM dependency, that would be splendid.
Revisions: I want to be able to roll back changes up to the first change to the document that has ever been made, not only in one session, but also between sessions/program runs.
I need notifications: each process must be able to be notified of changes to the document so it can update its view accordingly.
I see these requirements as rather basic, a foundation to solve the usual tough problems of an editing application: undo/redo, multiple views on the same data. Thus, the database system should be lightweight and undemanding.
Thank you for your insights in advance :)
Berkeley DB is an undemanding, light-weight key-value database that supports locking and transactions. There are bindings for it in a lot of programming languages, including C++ and python. You'll have to implement revisions and notifications yourself, but that's actually not all that difficult.
It might be a bit more power than what you ask for, but You should definitely look at CouchDB.
It is a document database with "document" being defined as a JSON record.
It stores all the changes to the documents as revisions, so you instantly get revisions.
It has powerful javascript based view engine to aggregate all the data you need from the database.
All the commits to the database are written to the end of the repository file and the writes are atomic, meaning that unsuccessful writes do not corrupt the database.
Another nice bonus You'll get is easy and flexible replication and of your database.
See the full feature list on their homepage
On the minus side (depending on Your point of view) is the fact that it is written in Erlang and (as far as I know) runs as an external process...
I don't know anything about notifications though - it seems that if you are working with replicated databases, the changes are instantly replicated/synchronized between databases. Other than that I suppose you should be able to roll your own notification schema...
Check out ZODB. It doesn't have notifications built in, so you would need a messaging system there (since you may use separate computers). But it has transactions, you can roll back forever (unless you pack the database, which removes earlier revisions), you can access it directly as an integrated part of the application, or it can run as client/server (with multiple clients of course), you can have automatic persistency, there is no ORM, etc.
It's pretty much Python-only though (it's based on Pickles).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zope_Object_Database
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/ZODB3
http://wiki.zope.org/ZODB/guide/index.html
http://wiki.zope.org/ZODB/Documentation

Extending Filenet P8 3.5 Workplace with custom GUI and code

I'm not familiar with Filnet P8.
My assumptions from reading some online docs is that it has a central web-based user interface called Workplace which is implemented on the Java web stack and communicates with the core parts of Filenet through Java APIs.
Also it seems you can extend the Workplace trough JSR 186 compliant portlets. - from what I've read Filnet P8 Workplace is not a portal itself and cannot host portlets, but provides some of the functionality as portlets which can be used with 3rd party portals.
Filenet also seems to have a lot of extensibility points which don't require coding, but I'm considering a highly-customized application with custom dynamic grids and forms.
Is it possible to extend the Workplace using portlets and/or plain JSP/Servlet approach with custom GUI for a custom workflow? (Probably the "Web Application Toolkit" is the tool)
The GUI can contain grids with filtering and column selection, forms (not paper once) with dynamically disabling/enabling fields, custom search forms, dynamic context and dropdown menus.
The GUI should be able to integrate with the Content and Process engines of course.
A link to an existing Filenet P8 based solution which proves such a custom Workplace GUI extension possible would be great.
Thanks!
This is possible. First of all Workplace comes with FULL source code. Look in the AESource directory (usually in c:\Program Files\FileNet\AE if you are running it on Windows). What you need to decide first of all is where you want to plug in (for example do you want to create a new Wokrplace page altogether like the Browse and Search pages or do you want to splice it in as a new action like Checkout, Get-Info etc).
Once you figure that out, I can provide more specific information of where you want to look to add your new code. Once you can display an entry point to your own feature in Workplace, then you can use whatever you want as far as controls etc. You can use JSF grids or just classic JSP stuff or even JQuery controls (provided you link the right libs etc).
Another thing to keep in mind is that you are going to need to get familiar with the Web Application Toolkit (WAT) so that you can make sure you are getting the right state information from Workplace (like the user token of who is logged in, maybe what doc id the user clicked on, what folder they were in when they entered your UI).
Anyways, here is some info to get you started. If you provide more info about where you want to splice your UI in, I can provide some guidance as what you need to change etc.