iPhone Users! Here's a Web App for Qaafiyah Expert

Tldr;

If you are in a hurry, here's the link to Qaafiyah Expert - Web:

• https://q.shakeeb.in/

The Web App and its Journey

Right from the beginning when I launched an android app for Qaafiyah Expert (an app to assist Urdu poets with rhymes, meter, dictionary, diary, designing and much more), people were requesting the same for iPhone users. As I was using the cross-platform approach for the app, building the same thing for iPhone wouldn't have taken so long. But the problem was, apple AppStore's pricing. I couldn't afford it. Well, most of us can't.

Anyway, after some research on pricings, I decided to go for a PWA (Progressive Web App), which is an installable app, but you don't need to pay a single penny to Google or Apple whatsoever. 

It does bring some drawbacks, but there are alternatives for most of the incompatible native-app functionalities. For a naïve user though, PWAs and native Android/ios apps are indistinguishable. For instance:

• Visiting a Progressive Web App asks you to "Add it to Home Screen", which is alternative to "Installing an app"
• It does have an icon, just like a native app
• It can work offline using service workers etc.

This PWA for Qaafiyah Expert had been hosted on my domain 'q.shakeeb.in' for quite a while now, as you can see in the "first commit" here. But some of the features were not working as expected, so I didn't announce it "officially." Now that the android app has been completely rewired, performance is improved and speed is optimized, I decided to use the new code-base, modified it for the web-app and deployed it. iPhone users can now finally use this app.

If you are an android user though, I strongly recommend the android version, which has some cool extra features and obvious UX advantages.

Once again, here's the link to the web-app:

Qaafiyah Expert - Live Demo

Hope this will assist in your poetry-writing journey. 

Rab raakha! 👋

Rekhta Content Scraper by Shakeeb Ahmad | For Programmers Only

Note: This is not yet available for non-programmers. Soon I'll make an easy-to-use version for all, iA.

This scraper with Node.js works for both prose and poetry. Check the GitHub repo for installation instructions.

You would need a text file with all the links you want to download the contents from. To get the list of links, you could manually collect all which interests you, or use the following to scrape all links from an author/poet page.

Bookmarklets - One Click Solution to get the links etc.

Rekhta loads 50 links at a time, and if user scrolls, it adds more content to the DOM. This extra fetch has not been automated in my code yet. (Well I tried, but parsing it wasted so much time that I preferred using manual scroll. Just let the page load, then press "end" on your keyboard. Wait for a moment, it will add all the remaining links.)

Anyway, once you have the complete list on the page, you can use the bookmarklets below to copy all of them with a click.

I've been testing this in browser console for a while now, i.e. open browser console, then paste the script, then change the page text to only what I need, then select and copy them manually. 

Later on I decided to use magic of bookmarklets to automate these tasks I've been doing repeatedly: 

• Copy all the links from the Poet/Author page.
• For LitUrdu specifically, turn them into an "object" with required properties (title, author, link, description, text) and copy it.
• Use the "object" to automatically fill-in text-boxes on new Blogger post.

Ultimate plan is to use Blogger API and post it directly, but this bookmarklet approach doesn't hurt much because most of the things I'm doing are just a click away.

Bookmarklets

Drag and drop the links to the bookmarks bar in your browser. (Ctrl+Shift+b to toggle the bar)

CopyRekhtaLinks

Use on author/poet's page to copy all the links to their enlisted work

CopyRekhta{}

Use on individual poem/story page to copy an object with properties (title, author, link, description, text). Modify as per your needs.

BloggerPaste

Use on a new Blogger post after pasting the "object" from rekhta in console. This will fill in all the required fields in the new post automatically.

PDF to Single Image - A Tutorial by 17 Year Old Me

Back in the days when I had a small Nokia phone, I wanted to do EVERTHING in that tiny device. It wasn't actually mine but because I was going to college, I was more "in need" of it than my sister.

Source: gsmarena.com [1]

The one on your right with maroon border. That was it.

Anyway, with a screen of 144x160px, I wanted to read PDFs which were stored in our desktop + laptop. Lots of books, of almost all genres I was interested in. Interestingly enough, the same neatly arranged folders are copied over to every computer I have used. So I still have all those books, plus what was added later on.

Initially, the idea to "read PDF on phone" was for the Quran, so that I could read it in the Indo-Pak Naskh font. Actually I had a Quran app in it, full text with super fast search engine, but the font used in that wasn't good enough for long tilaawat. In fact, even after getting android phone I've been searching something as fast as that app. I had been a fan of that guy who built it. Just looked it up, he goes by the name of Raza Mahi. His "Mahi Dictionary" was awesome too. All java .jar applications are things of the past now, but he has also moved on and started to build the similar apps for Android now. Good for him. I've linked his website in the references. [2]

So where was I? Yes. As I had difficulty reading the Quran in that app, I selected a PDF copy of Quran which had Arabic text in one column and its Urdu translation side-by-side. I cropped-out the translation part (making the text narrow enough to fit on my phone) and then started thinking about a way to achieve the result.

Necessity is the mother of invention they say, so I came up with two methods (discussed in the booklet below). Will attach the Quran files too for the record. Wow! Time flies. Seems like yesterday to me.

Later on when I converted many books to 'single image' using the same method, I compiled a short tutorial in the form of a booklet. I've left the whole text as is, without any correction in grammar or sentence structure, because

1. It's a reminder of my journey (read the booklet and see for yourself how writing styles change)
2. It's cute. ;)

Here's the summary of the two methods discussed in the booklet:

Method 1: Microsoft Office OneNote + MS Paint

Method 2: PDF to Images + IrfanView

Read the booklet and know how to use them. And remember it's an OLD tutorial.

DOWNLOADS

PDF to Single Image Tutorial (Booklet) : Read online or download

https://archive.org/details/PDFToSingleImageShakes.Ahmad

IrfanView: I came to know later on that this was very popular image-manipulation tool back then, and still is. Its first release was in June 1996. Now it's more powerful than ever. Check its Wikipedia page.[3]

https://www.irfanview.com

PDF to Images Converter: I still use it. Small size, works smoothly.

https://www.weenysoft.com/free-pdf-to-image-converter.html

Enjoy!

Reference

[1] Specifications of Nokia C1-01 via gsmarena [link]

[2] Raza Mahi Team - Old Apps [link]

[3] IrfanView on Wikipedia [link]