Possible Workaround to Dropbox - Strawman & Call To Arms

[GeorgeMcGinn]

I agree that reading from CLIPBOARD is destructive, and only available locally to the device. But its use would be consistent with what Apple designed it for. If a user used a system to copy a file from the forum, whether it be source, photo, GUNZIP file, it could be copied from the forum to the CLIPBOARD, then downloaded to the local device what was copied from an OUTSIDE source.

Apple should not be upset with that. As it is the same as coping text from a website or another app, and pasting it into our program. That is its purpose.

George.


From Henko:

On the second part of the problem: where to put a packed file, there are a number of possibilities, already mentioned in the discussions. CLIPBOARD would be a nice, but it is LOCAL in the user's device, and reading data from the clipboard does destroy it there (a bit like quantum mechanics), Hence it should be modified. An easily recognizable remote clipboard in the "cloud" would probably upset Apple to the highest degree.

[GeorgeMcGinn]

Mr. K, once I get my server up and running again, I'd gladly allow its use, even as an archive for posts that are old enough to place somewhere else.

I can offer it to even host you forum. Space is not an issue since I can always add more drives to it.

Anyway, I am not suggesting that we change the way we use the forum now. All I think others are saying is we use the forum the way we are now, but we build an interface like the D&D Browser, capable of copying source, images, music or other assets we currently pass to users now.

George.

What about the possibilities of the SB forum?

SB Forum cannot be used as a transshipment base to transfer files between local file system and sB because its storage resources will be depleted very fast.

[GeorgeMcGinn]

I was not aware of this, and this may also be a contributing factor to why removing Dropbox from SmartBASIC may save time and allow Mr. K to add in other things that we would really like to have.

I got the following from a photo app that I use quite regularly today, and was caught off guard by this.

The message:

The old version of the Dropbox platform is being retired on September 28, 2017. The developer of this app has yet to acknowledge the change, so this app may not continue to work in the future.

I know that the Dropbox App has been updated 3 times, and as soon as I get my once a month disability check, I have 190 updates that are waiting that Apple will not allow me to play movies or music I own in the cloud nor will it allow me to update Apps (They will hold all for ransom for .99 cents).

Anyway, I believe we have a good start towards a real solution to removing Drobpx. I just used the D&D Browser to download all the items I needed (source, libs, and images) and the links to files, which I have a prorgram (Resolving URL) that will copy any file from a website to the SmartBASIC IDE).

However, once these were downloaded, it was a manual renaming and copying them to the proper directory(ies) to run them. Once we can come up with a process, which i will write programming specs to take the pieces we have, identify the new coding, and develop a GUI that will allow us to set everything up in one screen and run it, we can work on how to rename or preserve the file name being copied. I noticed that for images, the links do possess the file name. We just need to make changes to parse them out. For source files, we can insist that the first line be something like "REM Program: Compare v1.0.sb", and the program we write when it sees this will create a source file with that name in it.

I know there is a lot of information recently posted by me and others, and I am still reading them, and doing some planning on the items that will work, code we have, code needed to be written, and I am very confident that we can remove Dropbox and use the forum, or maybe even GITHUB or SOURCEFORCE as well as our forum to put all thee assets in one place and run a program that gets them and downloads them.

While SB does not support FTP as a protocol, Rbytes and I have been able to use the HTTPD protocol as a viable replacement. Again, I am very confident we have most if not all the pieces to create a program that will process the files from wherever (right now it all works with the forum) and a solution is close at hand.

So please, read everything, and, I like to write on paper flowcharts of processes and systems, which is what I am doing so I know what features we are misssing. I am very pleased with the participation which has supplied great information, so please continue. No idea is that far fetched, and any idea, even if SB does not support it, may spark other ideas on how to accomplish it. As you can see, everyone has been very constructive and I hope we continue along those lines.

Thank you for taking time out of your busy days, and being disabled/retired, I do have time to try writing proof of concepts to what has been suggested so far. Let's keep the momentum going.

George

PS: If someone else wishes to write the specs on this, it does not have to be me. I'd rather it be a collaberatve effort, and hopefully we can divide the coding up into manageable pieces for anyone who wishes to become part of the team.

[GeorgeMcGinn]

I created a link to a program (the source for D&D Browser) and tried to run a program I wrote a while back that executes CGI scripts and downloads webpages.

The link:https://www.dropbox.com/s/z1dcgnl1bfb5c ... r.txt?dl=0 when typed in a browser displays the source, which can be copied/pasted. However, my program gets a 405 error, and when I used the two-line code listed in the SB Help I get a webpage without the source. \

This is what my uplink program gets:

URL to execute: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z1dcgnl1bfb5c ... r.txt?dl=0

HTTP Error:
HTTP Status: 405
405
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>Dropbox - 405</title>
<link href="https://cfl.dropboxstatic.com/static/css/error.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://cfl.dropboxstatic.com/static/images/favicon.ico"/>

</head>
<body>
<div class="figure">
<img src="https://cfl.dropboxstatic.com/static/im ... llo_m1.png" alt="Error: 405"/>
</div>
<div id="errorbox">
<h1>Error (405)</h1>Something went wrong. Don't worry, your files are still safe and the Dropboxers have been notified. Check out our <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/help">Help Center</a> and <a href="https://forums.dropbox.com">forums</a> for help, or head back to <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/home">home</a>.
</div>

</body>
</html>


URL submitted: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z1dcgnl1bfb5c ... r.txt?dl=0

HTTP Status Code=405

ERROR: 405 – Method NOT Allowed – Description below from Section 10.4.6 in http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt


10.4.6 405 Method Not Allowed
The method specified in the Request-Line is not allowed for the
resource identified by the Request-URI. The response MUST include an
Allow header containing a list of valid methods for the requested
resource.

[GeorgeMcGinn]

That might be Apple's way of providing backward compatibility more than luck.

My iPad Air 2 refuses to charge and I have an appointment on Nov. 28 to have them look into it. Since I did not have my iMac working at the time (it is now) the last backup I have is Jan 17, 2017, so I have close to 10,000 lines of code that I am praying I will not lose.

I would have used Dropbox but its status is all but certain, and I actually slowed down development with SmartBASIC until the problem without having Dropbox has been solved.

Since Ricardo and I are the only two really communicating about solutions, I have a solution, and it will exist outside of Apple and will require a program in .COD format, since I had started to write it before my tablet died.

As for the new characters, I do have a solution to this, but since no one else here has really contributed to solving it other than Ricardo and Dutchman, I'm gonna write it as a .COD file as well.

This way, if someone wants it, they can ask me for it (or I will place it on Github or another 3rd party site not affiliated with SmartBASIC) and it will use a source repository outside of the products "official" sites, the code will not be part of the examples, so Mr. K will not be accused of cheating, and since the solution will not involve using XCode or any other language owned by Apple, nor will the users have access to change source code or webserver code, it will be self-contained and uncorruptable, and Apple will not have a say in my development.

I've already run my design and concept past a law firm I used when I was running a full-time consulting firm, and they say that since Apple allows 3rd party apps, allows ad-hoc apps, and my solution will be very specific and narrow and I have built in all the safeguards where my code will not and cannot become part of someone's XCode or App, Apple has no control over stopping it. That was the $250 first visit view of the situation. And if they were not sure of their advice, they would not have given it to me.

Even though I do not have a tablet or iphone at the moment, I am still working on the design document and flowcharting the system and how it will work.

George.