This app is just a great idea, and a very nice implementation allowing you to view the iOS documentation on your iOS device.  Especially on the iPad.

The app is from Ole Zorn and is very easy to set up.  Build it in Xcode to your device, and all the downloading of either iOS SDK or Mac OS X documentation is done right in the app.

Since it’s open source if you’re looking to create a similar app for viewing other documentation you can see how it’s done.

The app makes great use of iOS UI components on the iPad and even allows for bookmarking and opening in the browser if needed. Definitely a step above how Apple’s documentation reads online on the iPad, and you don’t have to connect to the internet after you’ve downloaded the doumentation.

Here’s a quick preview of the app in this video:

You can download the app from Github here.

If you want to view the iOS documentation on your Kindle Ole has a Python script converting the Apple developer documentation to the mobipocket format that can be found here.

Very handy for viewing documentation on the road.

Welcome to the site, another week has gone by, and this week Apple released yet another update to the iOS SDK beta.

This week’s resources include a UIView transitions library enabling some very slick transitions, a brilliant demonstration of many different core animation techniques, the conversion of some Cocos2D iPhone tutorials to the cross-platform Cocos2D-X and more.

Here are the resources listed in order of popularity:

1. Open Source: 3D View Transitions Library Including Cloth And Flip Style Transitions - An excellent library utilizing OpenGL ES allowing you to perform custom transitions between UIView objects.

2. Open Source: Unique Device ID Generator For UDID Alternative - After stories broke on tech sites about impending changes regarding access to the UDID by iOS apps – this library was created to allow for easy generation of a unique ID using the app bundle identifier and the device’s MAC address.

3. Open Source: Extensive Core Animation Techniques Demo - A brilliant demonstration of multiple core animation techniques from a CocoaHeads meeting.

4. Building An Aim/ICQ/Jabber Client On iOS (Open Source Frameworks, Examples, And A Tutorial) - Responding to a question on this topic – this is a list of frameworks for the Oscar and XMPP protocols along with an open source AIM/ICQ messaging app, and a tutorial on building a Jabber client with the Objective-C XMPP framework.

5. Open Source: Library For Stacking And Sliding Tables Like The iPad Twitter App - An iPad control allowing you to easily create animated tables that can stack and slide to display large amounts of data.

6. Tutorial: How To Import And Export Documents With Your Apps - An excellent step-by-step guide demonstrating how to import documents (including .PDF) documents, and export them for use within other apps that can handle docemnts.

7. Open Source: Easy UITableView Replacement Library Great For Forms/Config Screens - A brilliant library allowing you to create Tableviews with just a few lines of code with cells including various controls – particularly good for forms, and loading screens.

8. Tutorials: Cocos2D Game Tutorials Converted To Cross Platform C++ Cocos2D-X - A collection of tutorials written for iOS Cocos2D and accompanying C++ Cocos2D-X source code that can run on both the iOS and Android platforms.

9. Open Source: Collapsable Grouped TableView Library And Tutorial - An easy to use library allowing to add a minimize, and maximize buttons to each group within a grouped tableview.

10. News: Open Source 2D PixelWave Game Engine Officially Released - An open source 2D game engine for the iOS platform fashioned after ActionScript 3, designed to be usable quickly by Flash game developers.

I have received inquiries quit a few times from visiting developers asking about available open source libraries for creating charts on iOS devices.  It is definitely understandable as many of the commercial charting libraries come with a very hefty up front cost.

While there are quite a few open source libraries that have charting and plotting features that run on iOS here are a few that are designed specifically for this purpose allowing you to draw many different kinds of graphs.

Core-Plot – This is definitely the top recommendation for open source charting libraries on iOS.  You can create many different kinds of charts – line charts, pie charts, bar graphs and even for stock charts like candlestick charts, and bar charts using the built in chart types.

Here’s a screenshot showing an example of a couple of the built in chart types:

You can see examples of some of the chart types supported here.

iOS Plot -  While there probably are too many situations where Core Plot won’t meet your needs – if  you want something different, but want to stick with an Objective-C library this much smaller project from Hon Cheng provides support for line charts, and some very slick looking pie graphs like the one in this screenshot:

If your charting needs still aren’t satisfied at this point there are numerous Javascript libraries available. You can load your chart in a UIWebView – I saw this solution used many times in the earlier days of the app store before Core Plot.  One solution I’ve seen recommended for this is the gRaphael charting library which can definitely be used to create some beautiful graphs.  You may also want to take a look at some of the Javascript charting library link roundups such as this list of 20 Javascript Charting Libraries.

You will be able to create nearly any chart using the libraries mentioned above, but if not you might want to mention your chart ideas in the Core Plot discussion group.  The core plot community has done a great job of providing updates.