New tool to categorize the libraries

Informatix

Informatix

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Hello,

I'm working on a new tool that allows to categorize any library posted in the Additional Libraries section. I hope that this tool will become the first organized list of user libraries (with links to the forum and demos that you can run inside the tool).

I'd like to have your opinion about the different categories. Categories have to be broad enough to encompass a variety of libs but not too much or they would be of no interest. Here's my first proposal (you're invited to improve the description too):
Action Bars: Any bar that provides user actions and navigation through the app
Animations: Anything able to animate a visual element
Camera: Anything related to the device camera
Communication: Anything related to networks or communication protocols
Databases: Anything related to local or remote databases
Dialogs: Anything displaying a message or requiring an input in a dedicated window
Files: Anything doing the management/encryption/selection/etc. of files
Games: Anything related to games
Graphics: Anything that produces a graphical representation or processes images
HTML & XML: Anything related to markup languages
Input Controls: Any control allowing the user to input, select or change a value
Lists: Listviews, gridviews, ordered data collections
Menus: Any control offering a choice in a list
Text: Anything that displays or processes text.

A library, of course, can belong to more than one category.
 
Cableguy

Cableguy

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Informatix said:
For the categories listed in my first post, I tried to find at least 3 libs that could match. Maybe that could be used as a rule to create a new category: at least 3 libs.
Any lib without a specific category will end in the Miscellaneous category.
Click to expand...
The Phone lib would be another... but you did precise "Aditional Libraries" and "List User Libraries".. so I guess official libs will be left out?
 
Informatix

Informatix

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Cableguy said:
The Phone lib would be another...
Click to expand...

If I had to create a category for the Phone library, it would be the "bloatware" category :)

Cableguy said:
but you did precise "Aditional Libraries" and "List User Libraries".. so I guess official libs will be left out?
Click to expand...
Yes, the official libraries will be excluded. The name of my app could be "Hidden gems of the forum".
 
I

inakigarm

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Great idea , do you plan to categorize only b4a libs or include B4i & B4j libs?

And for the categories list, how about an audio and video lib category?
 
mlc

mlc

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Informatix said:
For the categories listed in my first post, I tried to find at least 3 libs that could match. Maybe that could be used as a rule to create a new category: at least 3 libs.
Any lib without a specific category will end in the Miscellaneous category.
Click to expand...

I have reviewed the libraries and i think it is the only one.
 
Informatix

Informatix

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inakigarm said:
Great idea , do you plan to categorize only b4a libs or include B4i & B4j libs?

And for the categories list, how about an audio and video lib category?
Click to expand...
The resulting app will be an APK so the list is mainly focused on B4A, but the database can be edited by the user so you can add any lib that you want or you can reuse the idea to provide a tool for B4i/B4j. I will provide the source on demand (however, it is very very simple).
I will add a property for libs indicating whether they are compatible with other variants of B4.

Audio: of course !!! How I missed that !
Video: at least 3 libs ?

Important note: this tool will never be an exhaustive list of all libraries because:
- some libs have no example and my policy is to include only libs that can be tried in the app (chargeable libs will be included however, with no example if I don't own it);
- some libs are replaced by a more complete version (e.g.: ABunzip by Archiver or Gestures by Gesture Detector);
- some libs do not work any longer because of changes in the OS;
- some libs are buggy and I don't want to lose my time with them.
 
mlc

mlc

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Informatix said:
I wonder whether there's not a lib by TheDesolateSoul that could go under this category? I can't remember the name nor what it does.
Click to expand...

Maybe this ?
Custom Notification 1.0 - This library allows you to customize the look of your notification in the notification bar. It requires you to create the layout in an xml file. Note this library has been deprecated for Barx's library: Custom Notification v1.01
 
S

sorex

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Informatix said:
I'm working on a new tool that allows to categorize any library posted in the Additional Libraries section.
Click to expand...

I requested a multilevel library treeview inside B4A once to organize things a little and to seperate the cores from the none cores,
too bad it didn't make it to a final release yet as it could've saved you from all this work.
 
Informatix

Informatix

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sorex said:
I requested a multilevel library treeview inside B4A once to organize things a little and to seperate the cores from the none cores, too bad it didn't make it to a final release yet as it could've saved you from all this work.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that we talk of the same thing. My tool is meant to keep track of the libraries posted in the forum and to retrieve them when needed. The lack of organization in the forum makes this difficult. Look at the libraries posted recently. DonManfred did a lib that already exists (a label with HTML contents) because he was not aware of LabelExtras.
My tool allows to try the library and see if it looks fine or works well on your devices.
 
S

sorex

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oh like that :) yeah, that wiki like page has a lot of them but it's far from complete and finding something for a task can take a while when you don't know the right name of the lib.

my request was ordering them when you already have them on your system.
 
S

sorex

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that would be a nice tool indeed, you could use reference links to simular libraries.

do you plan to add comments aswell? like that ABzip one that strips of the first or last filename letter that can be mentioned in the comments as warning. or a buggy flag.
 
thedesolatesoul

thedesolatesoul

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Informatix said:
I wonder whether there's not a lib by TheDesolateSoul that could go under this category? I can't remember the name nor what it does.
Click to expand...
I think you mean THIS one. (Badly named, impossible to find!)
Part of it doesnt work in Android 5 as google deprecated the methods for getRecentTasks and some others.
As far as I am aware the rest of the library works well, although i havent tested it in a while.

I think you are building something similar to these (they may help you with more ideas):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.desarrollodroide.repos
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inappsquared.devappsdirect

You can also add Hardware (NFC), Calendar/Contacts, ExternalAPIs (Dropbox/Flickr/Twitter/FB)

Just wondering, what tools are you building this in? And what is the motivation behind it? (Personal or interests?)[/URL]
 
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