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Richard Maseles · 06-22-2009, 10:19 AM

Has someone here either created a standalone iPhone app consisting entirely of just (or mostly) text? And-- very important-- did that app include interior hyperlinks, i.e., links within the app/text to other locations within the text? I need it to go beyond just a table of contents feature to include footnotes and indexing.

Before someone suggests Calibre/ePub or some other e-book reader like eReader or Mobipocket, I need to say that I'm quite familiar with those and appreciate what they bring to the table, but I have editorial and business reasons for at least investigating a standalone iPhone app.

I had some communication with someone who, for a time, was licensing his e-book/independent app software (for a LOT of money!) (or I thought it was, anyway). I would have paid the licensing fee in a heartbeat, however, except he said that he hadn't solved the internal hyperlink problem-- the iPhone program environment insisted on opening Safari in its default environment with his internal hyperlinks. And he wasn't interested in solving the problem.

I can't help but think that the iPhone's UIWebView, which is supposed to open up non-internet HTML docs, is the best solution, particularly since I'm creating simple, clean HTML as my default electronic document. But I am not much of a programmer and I don't own a mac, which I understand is required to create apps in the iPhone SDK environment. And I don't know Objective-C. I'm willing to at least discuss what an outside programmer would charge for conversion, although I'd rather have this person create a template if possible.

Anyway, I'm asking the hive mind-- what do you know about this? Thanks in advance.

06-22-2009, 10:19 AM	#1
Richard Maseles Junior Member Posts: 8 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2009 Device: Palm Treo	standalone iPhone book app Has someone here either created a standalone iPhone app consisting entirely of just (or mostly) text? And-- very important-- did that app include interior hyperlinks, i.e., links within the app/text to other locations within the text? I need it to go beyond just a table of contents feature to include footnotes and indexing. Before someone suggests Calibre/ePub or some other e-book reader like eReader or Mobipocket, I need to say that I'm quite familiar with those and appreciate what they bring to the table, but I have editorial and business reasons for at least investigating a standalone iPhone app. I had some communication with someone who, for a time, was licensing his e-book/independent app software (for a LOT of money!) (or I thought it was, anyway). I would have paid the licensing fee in a heartbeat, however, except he said that he hadn't solved the internal hyperlink problem-- the iPhone program environment insisted on opening Safari in its default environment with his internal hyperlinks. And he wasn't interested in solving the problem. I can't help but think that the iPhone's UIWebView, which is supposed to open up non-internet HTML docs, is the best solution, particularly since I'm creating simple, clean HTML as my default electronic document. But I am not much of a programmer and I don't own a mac, which I understand is required to create apps in the iPhone SDK environment. And I don't know Objective-C. I'm willing to at least discuss what an outside programmer would charge for conversion, although I'd rather have this person create a template if possible. Anyway, I'm asking the hive mind-- what do you know about this? Thanks in advance.