iTunes File Sharing / offline editing?

[bnt]

Hi,

I just upgraded my iPod Touch to iOS 4, so iTunes now offers me File Sharing, and I can see the PocketCAS Pro files I've created in there. If I transfer a .pcpro file to my PC and open it, I can see it's a custom mix of text and binary code.

My question is: do you think it's possible to edit these files on the PC? It would be a lot easier when dealing with long calculations, matrices etc. - I could do the bulk of the typing with a real keyboard, then tweak the calculations on the iPod.  I tried uploading a file with some formulae in plain text, but PocketCAS crashed out when I tried to load it. If I knew what the file format was, I might be able to throw together an encoder/decoder for .pcpro files.

[MrMage]

Hello,

PocketCAS files are stored as archived binary property lists (binary plists). This is a format specific to Mac OS X. You might find an appropriate editor for Windows. Please note that I can not give support for session files modified this way, because all sorts of bad things can happen, including (but not limited to) your cat disappearing.

Cheers

Daniel

[bnt]

Thanks for that - not really familiar with PLIST files, but I guess they're binary-encoded XML, and the Vowsoft Plist Editor seems to open them OK. I can't see me doing any advanced editing this way, but I was able to change single lines without a problem. For example, I just changed a 2x2 matrix to a 32x32 matrix and loaded it in to PocketCAS Pro, which was able to find the Determinant in about 5 seconds. (It couldn't Invert the matrix, though - error 70000, "too big"!)

As a low priority feature request, can I suggest implementing some kind of plain text import/export method? You could exchange data with GIAC, for example. 

[MrMage]

I added your request to the wish list, though I'm not yet sure if and how I'll implement it.

I'd be very happy if you could leave a review of PocketCAS on the App Store.

As you noticed, there's a limit on calculation sizes in order to avoid very long calculation times and crashes due to memory exhaustion.