Attributed String Creator 1.1
Device: Mac OS
Category: Developer Tools
Price: $5.99, Version: 1.0 -> 1.1 (iTunes)
Description:Attributed String Creator takes all of the work out of programming with NSAttributedStrings by automatically generating native Objective-C code from your formatted text.
Write, paste or import any text into Attributed String Creator and it will produce a neat and easily readable equivalent of your text in NSMutableAttributedString declaration form. Copy this into your Xcode project and you’ll have an exact reproduction of your text as a variable you can assign to labels, text views, buttons, tables and anything else that supports it.
See a video of of Attributed String Creator in action http://youtu.be/y7JiYZu_6eE
There are lots of advantages to using attributed strings in your apps; the aesthetics of an app can make or break it so it’s important that your apps look their best. Having richly formatted, sharp, vibrant text can make a big difference to how users perceive your work and will help your apps stand out from the crowd.
App Developers have tried many ways of producing rich typography in their apps in the past, but they all have their failings:
● Creating a png or jpg of the text and displaying it as an image (This won’t look sharp, won’t resize itself for different screen dimensions and can’t be created dynamically)
● Using multiple labels for each alternative text style (This isn’t practical unless formatting only changes on separate lines)
● Using Interface Builder’s attributes inspector (Out of these options, this is the best way, but it can’t be dynamically made in code, it doesn’t support custom fonts, as of Xcode 5 it doesn’t affect iOS 6 builds and it’s impractical for editing large portions of text)
● Using a UIWebView and formatting the text with HTML (This only works as a replacement for a UITextView. You couldn’t use this technique with a button title for example)
● Working with Core Text (This is a lower level, more customizable text manipulation framework but it’s too complicated to be practical unless you specifically require the use of its advanced features)
All of these workarounds exist because of the difficulty and amount of time it takes to programmatically declare Apple’s native form of rich text ……but now the problem is solved.
Attributed String Creator Features:
Live Code Generation
● Alter anything in the text editing area and see it instantly reflected in code
iOS and OSX Compatibility
● You can switch between producing code for mobile apps or mac applications
Neat, Sensible and Readable Code
● All fonts, colors and styles are grouped together and declared in order to allow easy modification
Numerous Means of Importing Text
● Support for opening doc, docx, rtf and similar text documents, as well as anything that can be cut and pasted
Smart Font Support
● Even non-standard fonts (for example those downloaded from the internet) will be properly named and declared in the code output. The application knows which fonts are standard in iOS and will alert you if you are using fonts that require additional setup prior to use
Easy Importing of Multiline Strings
● Even if you don’t want to use rich formatting in your strings, you can use the application just to add in new line characters for you
Full Color Support
● Every text color will be detected and declared exactly as it is in the original string
Vast Range of Paragraph Styles Supported
Including, but not limited to:
● Alignment
● Underline
● Indentation
● Line Spacing
● Background color
● Strikethrough
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What's New
You can now make attributed strings for OSX apps as well as iOS ones
Tweaked and improved a few things
Fixed one or two very minor bugs
Attributed String Creator