Golly 1.3 for iPad

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Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by Andrew » December 22nd, 2020, 5:38 pm

Golly 1.3 for iPad is now available from the App Store. Note that your iPad must be running iOS 13.0 or later. My old iPad can't even use that iOS so I haven't been able to test Golly 1.3 on an actual iPad, but it works ok in my Mac's Simulator so hopefully it will be ok on your iPad!

Not a lot of changes in this version. Mainly just a rebuild so it supports the new Super algorithm and the new LtL support for HROT rules and the new neighborhoods (thanks to Chris Rowett).
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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » April 20th, 2021, 2:04 pm

Editing .rule files doesn't seem to work? All I get is a white screen.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by Andrew » April 20th, 2021, 9:17 pm

muzik wrote:
April 20th, 2021, 2:04 pm
Editing .rule files doesn't seem to work? All I get is a white screen.
What model iPad are you using? Editing works fine in the two simulators I've tested (an iPad Air 4th gen, and an iPad Pro 11in 2nd gen) but I can't test Golly on my old iPad thanks to Apple's unwillingness to support backward compatibility. If and when I get my hands on a newer model iPad I'll take another look, but unlikely to happen any time soon.
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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » April 22nd, 2021, 1:59 pm

Andrew wrote:
April 20th, 2021, 9:17 pm
muzik wrote:
April 20th, 2021, 2:04 pm
Editing .rule files doesn't seem to work? All I get is a white screen.
What model iPad are you using? Editing works fine in the two simulators I've tested (an iPad Air 4th gen, and an iPad Pro 11in 2nd gen) but I can't test Golly on my old iPad thanks to Apple's unwillingness to support backward compatibility. If and when I get my hands on a newer model iPad I'll take another look, but unlikely to happen any time soon.
iPad Air 2 running iPadOS 14.4.2, from what I'm aware.

I've also tested this with newly pasted rules just to confirm that I wasn't actually dealing with a blank rule file and can confirm that they don't show up either.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » April 22nd, 2021, 10:34 pm

A couple other things I'd like to mention:
- The nothing loading issue for rules also appears to happen for pattern files.
- Could the text box used for defining the rule be changed to another type of text box which autocorrect cannot interact with? On countless occasions I've had transitions and rule names changed by it because I'm apparently illiterate.
- In an older version of Golly saved patterns were alphabetically sorted. This is no longer the case and makes looking for patterns very difficult.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » May 11th, 2021, 1:49 pm

Setting weighted neighbourhoods with a sufficiently excessive range will guarantee a crash:

Image

On the "nothing loading" issue: this seems to arise for basically anything that brings up editable text, be it ruletables, pattern files or the info button.

Another observation I've made that is probably a bug is that exiting out of the app via the home button and reentering makes text larger in menus like the one depicted above for algorithm info. This persists until the menu is closed, and reopening it will reset the text size.

Before:
Image

After:
Image

And a final bug: entering full screen mode and then exiting it will put a white line above the bar at the bottom, which persists until the app is reset. Further experimentation reveals that there's actually a white line below the top menu I didn't take notice of that is there from the start but is absent when this bug is activated, so perhaps both of these lines are a bug and should be removed.

Before:
Image

After:
Image

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by Entity Valkyrie 2 » May 18th, 2021, 5:15 am

Is it possible to add StateInvestigator and Symbiosis (or SymbiosisEV2)?
Bx222 IS MY WORST ENEMY.

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StateInvestigator 3.0
B3-kq4ej5i6ckn7e/S2-i34q6a7
B3-kq4ej5y6c/S2-i34q5e
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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » May 22nd, 2021, 1:33 pm

Entity Valkyrie 2 wrote:
May 18th, 2021, 5:15 am
Is it possible to add StateInvestigator and Symbiosis (or SymbiosisEV2)?
For the former: wouldn't it be better to collectively work on a standard [R]Extended specification for the Super algorithm?

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by iNoMed » June 10th, 2021, 5:20 am

When running on the first developer beta of iPadOS 15, Golly has an annoying tendency to completely restart if another app is opened (i.e. Safari) while Golly is currently open (usually resulting in loss of unsaved data). This anomaly does not occur nearly as often on iPadOS 14 (instead behaving similarly to other apps on both iPadOS 14 and iPadOS 15), and becomes especially tedious when attempting to run rlifesrc with Golly active.

The only real workaround to this is to use Split View to run Safari and Golly at the same time (thereby keeping Golly active without interruptions), but as soon as I close Golly from here, the problems return and the unsaved content is gone once again...

Edit: I have since discovered that having the "Open pattern" menu open when launching another app will somehow prevent the app from restarting (the "This is Golly 1.2 for iOS." text does not appear, and any unsaved patterns remain accessible), which leads me to believe that the troublesome code might be related to rendering the grid itself. :?

(Side note: the "This is Golly 1.2 for iOS." label actually appears in Golly 1.3, this isn't a case of me not updating Golly or anything.)

Code: Select all

x = 35, y = 5, rule = B3/S23
4b2o3b2o3bo3b2ob2o3b2ob2o$2o2bobo3bo2bobobobobobobobobobo$obobo2bo2bob
o2bobo2bo2bobo3bobo$2bobo3bobobobo2bo5bobo3bobob2o$b2ob2o3b2ob2o3b2o3b
2ob2o3b2ob2o!

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » December 12th, 2021, 6:52 pm

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this does look to be pretty partially inside the grid to me:
Image

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » December 14th, 2021, 8:39 am

I've re-tested all issues mentioned so far in this thread after having updated to iPad OS 15.1 and all still seem present.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by erictom333 » May 13th, 2022, 8:27 pm

I can't get the new version because I can't get the latest version of IOS because my iPad is too old and Apple does not like its customers and I'm REALLY MAD. Rant aside, all of the patterns on Golly on mobile are in a random order. Why does this occur? It does not change when I edit a pattern, and new patterns get inserted randomly.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » June 20th, 2022, 9:26 am

Would it be possible to make all saved pattern files accessible via Files?

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by pzq_alex » June 20th, 2022, 9:30 am

muzik wrote:
June 20th, 2022, 9:26 am
Would it be possible to make all saved pattern files accessible via Files?
Also, opening patterns from Files would be nice. (I have been unable to open the downloaded patterns (of the Book) using Golly on iPad. )
\sum_{n=1}^\infty H_n/n^2 = \zeta(3)

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by erictom333 » June 27th, 2022, 7:28 am

erictom333 wrote:
May 13th, 2022, 8:27 pm
Rant aside, all of the patterns on Golly on mobile are in a random order. Why does this occur? It does not change when I edit a pattern, and new patterns get inserted randomly.
Anyone?

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » August 24th, 2022, 10:10 pm

erictom333 wrote:
June 27th, 2022, 7:28 am
erictom333 wrote:
May 13th, 2022, 8:27 pm
Rant aside, all of the patterns on Golly on mobile are in a random order. Why does this occur? It does not change when I edit a pattern, and new patterns get inserted randomly.
Anyone?
A tad late, but yes this absolutely does happen on my end.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » January 21st, 2023, 5:17 pm

Since updating to iPad OS 16.2, every attempt to paste in an RLE copied from a web browser results in a permission prompt to allow the paste to happen, which I find incredibly irritating.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by hkoenig » January 21st, 2023, 6:16 pm

In the settings, after I select "Golly", is see "Paste from Other Apps" with options. "Ask", "Deny" and "Allow". I have Allow checked, and not seeing any nagging. I believe I had to actually attempt a paste and allow it before this option appeared, but I don't remember.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » March 7th, 2023, 10:44 am

Since the iPad model and operating system I use have changed since my first post in this thread (now a 4th-gen iPad Air running 16.3.1) I've decided to run through all of the issues I've reported here before. I have the following results:

- READ and EDIT links for patterns and rules still bring up a pure-white screen
- Weighted rulestrings with massive neighbourhoods (for example R500,C0,S,B,NG) still trigger a crash
- Exiting the app and re-entering it sometimes still results in text being enlarged (the main difference here is that the Home button no longer exists on this model)
- The white line above the grid still exists, and it still moves to the bottom of the grid in a much larger form when entering and exiting Full Screen
- Pasting patterns into bounded grids too small for them is still rejected even if "partially within grid". Golly only appears to check if the top-left corner is inside of the bounded grid.

So all of those issues still remain, as well as the fact that saved patterns aren't ordered alphabetically and AutoCorrect interferes with the rule text box, which may also be issues.

Since the aspect ratio of this specific model is weird, I've also noticed a new thing that may or may not have been there before: the "Save Pattern" box's top bar doesn't extend the whole way across it.

Also, changing "Ask" to "Allow" fixed the annoying paste behaviour. No idea why it was set to Ask in the first place - perhaps a new default setting?

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by muzik » June 7th, 2023, 8:48 am

A problem I've had for many years is that downloading many pattern files directly through the built in browser just... doesn't work. For example:
Image

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by erictom333 » July 28th, 2023, 6:53 am

Even after getting a new iPad and updating to the latest version of Golly, all the patterns are still in a random order. It doesn't randomise each time, it's the same random order each time, and it isn't in order of creation or last edit. Any idea why? Anyone able to fix it?

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by hkoenig » July 28th, 2023, 1:38 pm

I've encountered that issue with other iOS/iPad apps. Seems to be an issue with some NSFileManager calls like contentsOfDirectory(atPath:) where there's no control over the order in which items (in that case, string names) are returned. Since it seemed more of an esthetic issue when I encountered it, I never looked too hard at writing up my own solution, other than doing a sort of the returned string array.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by erictom333 » July 29th, 2023, 4:03 am

hkoenig wrote:
July 28th, 2023, 1:38 pm
I've encountered that issue with other iOS/iPad apps. Seems to be an issue with some NSFileManager calls like contentsOfDirectory(atPath:) where there's no control over the order in which items (in that case, string names) are returned. Since it seemed more of an esthetic issue when I encountered it, I never looked too hard at writing up my own solution, other than doing a sort of the returned string array.
Could you or another developer try and fix it? It's a significant problem as it makes it hard to find a certain pattern.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by hkoenig » July 29th, 2023, 10:19 am

It's an Apple iOS problem as far as I can tell.

One fix would be to not use the OS calls and write a method that goes through a directory and builds the list. Which kinda defeats the purpose of having the call available...

One thing I did notice, but never investigated fully is that it does appear that the order in the displayed list was related to the order used when the files were built into the app. Reordering them there seemed to help, but there were still anomalies. You need to talk to the people who have access to the Golly iPad project files for that. I'm just guessing based upon previous experience.

And yes, little, but highly visible bugs like this are most annoying. When I encountered this problem in my own apps, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the effort to write my own workaround.

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Re: Golly 1.3 for iPad

Post by erictom333 » August 9th, 2023, 4:40 am

Thing is, it's still a major problem for mobile Golly users such as me. Could you or someone who knows their way around the code at least try and fix t?

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