TFT Helper - beta test of app

[andreww]

iCloud: leaves out Android. I can't give it the time to do all the cloud variants.

CSV: that's easy enough. But how many people would use it? If you were going to take it to a spreadsheet it would be easy enough to write a spreadsheet that can import the current, admittedly stone-age, export format.

CSV would be a snap, but we'd need to agree what purpose it would serve.

[XRaysVision]

1. DropBox for Android (the main reason for iCloud is sharing between devices seamlessly.

2. CSV is universal exchange. If the this app imported and exported CSVs, that would be an easy way to share data between devices. It would allow exchanging characters between iOS and Android as well. It would be the format for data files and would be transparent to most users but would make the data available to others who might want to build that character sheet printing app.

#2 is far more useful than #1, IMHO. If CSV import/export is implemented, #1 might not be necessary at all.

[andreww]

DropBox synchronization looks like hours of work, and testing across Android devices would be nearly prohibitive. Actually, without spending cash money on testing we couldn't be sure of covering all of Android. It would be really neat for a few people, but I'm going to spend the time one other things.

CSV would take minutes, but I'm not sure how many people would use it. Are there five people who would use it?

A clever Google Sheet could interpret the current export string and produce a passable character sheet. I'll see if I can find the time to take a crack at that, but anyone could do it...

I definitely want to clarify how to use Import/Export. That should do most of what people need.

[XRaysVision]

What? No, no, no. Not syncing! Simple text file import and export. Export a CSV to a file and copy to Drop Box, iCloud, email it. Text it, whatever. It’s a simple text file in CSV format.

Nothing could be simpler. No complicated programming. It’s a simple way to let the user do whatever they want with a data file.

I export wulf.dat to my iOS file system, attach the file to an email, and I send it to you. You save the wild.dat attachment to your file system and import it into your Android app and...presto...you now have my character.

And this works because wolf.dat is a simple CSV text file.

[GranitePenguin]

Originally Posted by andreww

I definitely want to clarify how to use Import/Export. That should do most of what people need.

Originally Posted by XRaysVision

You save the wild.dat attachment to your file system and import it into your Android app and...presto...you now have my character.

Clarification is definitely in order. I still see no way to actually import data that's been exported with the current app. Am I missing something?

[andreww]

Putting CSV onto the clipboard is dead easy. Writing CSV to Dropbox is hard. Handing something to the built in sharing system is easy, and that will send the character to an email, text message, iOS Notes, clipboard, etc. But not to Dropbox, near as I can tell. That means Dropbox would mean installing another library to access that file system. That's a lot of time that needs to go somewhere else. Again, I'm not sure how many people want this.

I do need to clarify Import. From the main menu, select Create Character. You'll see the Import button at the bottom. Once you start editing the character the Import button goes away. So you can import over a fresh character, but you cannot import a character over an existing character. That's not obvious. Maybe the main menu should say "Create/Import"?

[GranitePenguin]

Originally Posted by andreww

I do need to clarify Import. From the main menu, select Create Character. You'll see the Import button at the bottom. Once you start editing the character the Import button goes away. So you can import over a fresh character, but you cannot import a character over an existing character. That's not obvious. Maybe the main menu should say "Create/Import"?

That is not the behavior I'm seeing (iOS 12.4 on iPhone 7). When I create a new character and immediately try to tap Import Character, nothing happens (by "nothing" I mean I can sometimes see the area look like it briefly highlights, but does not get processed in any meaningful way). The help dialog also says nothing about how to use Import Character (and is difficult to tap as well). Maybe the active region is off being too close to the bottom?

The main menu item can be Create/Import as long as either:

1. they are separate enough that it's obvious you are picking one or the other
2. a popup dialog is first displayed to pick import or manually create (eg, display "import? y/n")

[andreww]

Look at that, the Import button is broken. It worked the last time I used it. Well, that's going to push up the date for 1.1.

Sorry for the inconvenience. That explains why you couldn't figure out how to work it.

[JustAnotherJarhead]

85% of the world uses Android.

I hope you are ironing out the kinks for Android first.

[guymc]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

Well, maybe it's just me, but I would expect the ability to export and/or print a fully formatted "graphic display" version of a completed character sheet to be a pretty critical feature for an app like this. I hope this capability is added soon.

That’s a taller order than you’d think from a mobile app designed to work cross-platform at a variety of screen sizes. Hard in iOS, I would think. Nigh-impossible in Android without crippling it on anything but the newest devices.

Adobe should build an import feature into PDF for “mail merge” to allow a PDF form to import standard-formatted data. There are third-party plugins that do this, but they are expensive. That would solve a whole hell of a lot of “move data to printable formats” problems across all platforms — and solving multi-platform problems is what PDF is supposed to do.