Using Wax as a gideros plugin

techdojo

Whilst looking into native UI style plugin's for iOS I was reminded of WAX which as XCode library that integrates Lua with iOS and exposes all the Cocoa touch bindings for objective C to Lua.

WAX can be found here https://github.com/probablycorey/wax

However before I start I was wondering if anyone has already looked into integrating WAX (or a portion of it) as a Gideros plugin which would then (in theory) expose everything you can do in iOS to Gideros and allow for some amazing applications to really catapult Gideros into the limelight.

gorkem

Not that I know of. I was chatting to Atilim to integrate Wax once upon a time, well before plugins were born, but never implemented.

OZApps

@techdojo, @gorkem, Wax is one option, toLua, toLua++, swig and luaCocoa are some other options. now how useful will they be is a question. I mean GiderosStudio is already exposing parts of the C/C++ code for the Lua interface. What these do is similar but for the entire class than portions of it.

That was my understanding, or maybe I am wrong in assuming so, is it?

techdojo

My current thinking is to start with the current UI kit plugin and just keep adding more options to it, ultimately I want to be able to expose the CoreGraphics side so I can skin / theme native UI based apps.

OZApps

no Android (cross platform) love? After all your app will just only get pirated and installed on the many android devices.

techdojo

Actually when someone manages to create a decent UI plugin for Android (and I work out how it could be extended) then it might be worth considering.

Oddly enough, there seems to be plenty of opportunities for "ego-apps" on iOS but not so much on Android, it seems that all the "cool cats" are still playing on iOS and consider it the place to be

Given that you mentioned WidgetCandy before - have you had any experience with it? Does it do a decent job? just wondering if it's worth dropping ~£40 on

OZApps

Here's my take on it http://reviewme.oz-apps.com/2012/05/new-candy-flavour-widgetcandy.html

Though this is not the place for a beer related product, (apologies to the Cetins) but Mike from xpressive.com is a professional developer that has done quite a good job. Did you see the You Tube Video?

I think @Atilim was working on creating native UI as part of the core soon (I am sorry, I should refer to the RoadMap to confirm)

One of my clients complained about Android users pirating his apps like there's no tomorrow. I have had a lot of users that buy an app and then cancel the purchase, I almost feel that is like get the .apk and then get a full refund, now you have the .apk and the money back. Neither have I sold on the Amazon store, so Androids are not a personal favourite for me either. It's just that I have a Kindle Fire and the HP Touchpad that is flashed as an Android, so I have these two Android devices, I had an S7 Huawei (called the Touchtab here) and an Ideos 8150 which is really the pits, (but had Android 2.1) cost me a bomb and before I could use it for any development purpose, it was outdated. Not buying any more Androids, I wasted some good money on iPaqs in the past when they ran the PocketPC or MobilePC software and Microsoft buggered it. Have a WP7 which is quite fine as a phone, but not much given the development tools from Microsoft (insistance on the dotNet).

techdojo

I think it's down to the product more than anything else, a good friend of mine developed a Christmas countdown themed wallpaper for Android and it rocketed off, he did get a few refund requests and a few "weird" emails from customers, but not as much as he did sales.

He also did get an email from Google just before Christmas asking if he'd be prepared to make some changes as they were looking for a New Years countdown app to feature on New Years eve, suffice to say - he stepped up to the plate and had his app featured on the front page of the marketplace all over new year (and got the sales to prove it).

(search for JetBlack software on Google play)

He did have a couple of instances of dodgy infected versions / copies showing up on a Russian marketplace, but an email to Google apparently sorted that out - oddly enough considering it's a Christmas countdown app - both the free and the paid versions are still getting traction in the market place even now...