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wishlist

liberti
edited November 2014 in Acrosync for iOS
Hey, thanks for the new iOS version, I like it a lot. I just wanted to let you know three items on my wishlist, though - in order of importance for me.

1. I am using acrosync to sync from my depositories of papers and books. I have many thousands, however, and I don't always remember what document I want to open. It would be great if there was a search tool for content, specifically PDF, DJVU and ASCII. Now I know this is not an easy addition, so maybe you won't want to put in the extra effort. But I thought I'd let you know nonetheless. I believe there are toolboxes for performing PDF and obviously ASCII content. I'm not sure there is an easily accessible one for DJVU.

2. I have to move the DJVU files to a specific reader to open them - it would be grand if I could directly read them in Acrosync.

3. Could there be an advanced mode where one could simply input their own rsync command line?

Of course the mother of all troubles is the silly sandbox concept in iOS - so it's difficult for users to use their files :-( 

Yours

Leo

Comments

  • gchen
    I'll look into how hard it is to add the search functionality.

    As for DJVU files, it is very unlikely that Acrosync will integrate a DJVU reader in the near future, unless there is a good and stable library (whether open-source or commercial).  This is mainly because it is now much easier for other apps to open files stored in Acrosync with ios 8 storage extension, and therefore Acrosync will become more of a file provider and less of a document viewer.

    And for the advanced mode you requested, remember that Acrosync contains an independent implementation of the rsync protocol and doesn't depend on the open-source rsync binary, so those advanced rsync options do not apply to Acrosync.

    Thanks,
    Gang 
  • liberti
    Thanks Gang - those were just wishes, the app is great without those too. 

    I understand that opening DJVU files is not exactly standard. OK for the "advanced mode" - I did not understand you had an independent implementation of rsync.

    The search functionality would be fantastic, but it's hard to think exactly how to index all words in a large PDF library without bogging down the device forever. Maybe the indexing should take place on an external computer/server, and then you would just import hashmaps of (word,filename) pairs? But then you'd have to foresee all possible search terms a priori, or at least be connected to the internet every time you need to search, which is impractical.

    Here is another possibility. There could be a preliminary "indexing phase" (which could take a long time, but it would run only once, or rarely) where all words are extracted from the PDF library, then the list is polished by only keeping nouns/adjectives/verbs, then you could lose different desinences and just keep word roots, and finally you would only keep the most commonly occurring such words. You would then build your index hashmap based on those - and this would take a fair amount of time. Then, every time a user inputs a search term, you'd have to have a way to match this input to one of the words you have the index for. If the user agrees that the match is good, then you immediately output the filenames; else you perform a slow search across the library (which you could then add to the hashmap, so that further similar searches could be fast). On average, this should give you a pretty good local search functionality. But it's not easy to implement.

    Yours,

    Leo


  • liberti
    Gang, there's something else I would like to ask you - something which is way simpler than a search, and could help. The filenames in my PDF collection almost all follow the same scheme: author-words_in_title.pdf. I usually select PDFs based on the title words. But they are cut down because acrosync on iOS only reserves a very small part of the screen to the file names. Is there any way that the portion of the screen reserved to file names could be user-configurable? E.g. drag it towards the other side of the screen to make it full screen? This would be particularly useful in landscape mode, as the screen is large enough to show the whole filename.

    Let me know!

    Yours

    Leo
  • gchen
    This feature actually was available in older version, but for 3.0 I decided to switch to the much improved UISplitViewController in iOS 8.  Unfortunately the divider in UISplitViewController is still not draggable, unlike the MGSplitViewController that I used previously.

    I'll read the doc for UISplitViewController again to see if there is anything I can do.

  • mserra
    edited May 2015
    Hi gchen, liberti,

    Any news on the search option? this would be a great feature!!!
  • gchen
    edited June 2015
    Search is not in the plan unless iOS provides a simple API.
  • mserra
    gchen, we understand your answer. Thank's for reply
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