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Hello To everyone from the West Coast of Canada,

I have an iPad Air 1 running iOS 8.3, soon to be 8.4.1 and I would like to use it as my primary device (medical reasons) and avoid using my laptop as much as I can. I bought Editorial, Workflow, Drafts and just purchased Pythonista.

One of the problems I came across was when downloading the data from Intel's ARK database was that the XML files aren't XML but an MS Excel (XLSX) Document and in theory, it should open in Numbers and it does, but not as a spreadsheet of 145 Processors, as a single column, 1400 row document. I found some Python code which will convert XML/XLS to CSV but I didn't realize you need Pythonista to use the code in Workflow. I want to figure out as much on my own before asking for help but I do have a few questions and I would appreciate everyone's input.

Q1: Can anone recommend an ePub or PDF (paid or free) to use as a reference as I don't always have access to WiFi?

Q2: Should I keep Drafts on my iPad if I have Editorial. I'd like to stick with Editotrial, Pythonista & Workflow but I get the idea from looking at the workflows, it's better to have both.

Q3: I've read a few discussions about the Beta for 1.6 which if I recall, provides a "Share Sheet" alternative. Besides this, are there other obvious reasons to apply for the Beta?

Q4: I tried to change the theme in Pytonista and it crashed each time yet when I close & reopen the app, there's a checkmark beside the chosen theme but it never changes.

Thank you in advance for reading and your replies.r

re. 1: Reference for what? Pythonista comes with built-in offline documentation for the Python standard library and Pythonista's custom modules.

re. 3: Yes, the beta allows selecting Pythonista as a target in the share sheet, which you can use to run scripts on the shared data, or just use it in the interactive prompt. Be aware that installing the beta currently requires you to first delete Pythonista entirely, which means you'll lose any scripts and other data that you haven't backed up. Also because it's a beta there's always the risk of bugs and crashes that may lead to data loss, and not all features in the beta might make it into the 1.6 release.

re. 4: Might be a bug caused by a more recent iOS update. I'm using the beta on my iOS 8.3 iPad mini and themes work fine (though there were lots of internal changes to themes in the beta) and on my iOS 7 iPhone 4 with Pythonista 1.5 I don't have any issues either.

I think Q4 may be related to a bug in 1.5 that essentially causes crashes in the settings dialog when no file is open in the editor. It should go away when you open one of the examples.

Themes in 1.5 only have an effect on text in the editor btw, so you may not see any difference if you don't have a script open (this will change in 1.6, where themes affect the entire app).

For a reference you might want to take a look at How to Automate the Boring Stuff with Python which is a free online book with Chapter 12 – Working with Excel Spreadsheets. You can pay for a local copy but you can read the online copy for free.

Pythonista has great built in docs as was stated above and the Numpy module is a powerhouse for manipulating numerical data.

Is there a published sample data file from the Intel's ARK database? Have you checked out the Intel ARK app for iOS? What are you trying to get that it does not already deliver?

Sorry for taking two days to respond, I should take some time to setup the notifications when someone replies to me...

@dgelessus & @ccc,

I was hoping for both internal documentation and a book which I can follow along for ideas. Thank you both for this.

@dgelessus,

Thank you for the information about the Beta. I will apply and hopefully there is a slot available.

@omz & @dgelessus,

If I open a sample file first, Pythonista will not crash. Thank you for the solution.

@ccc,

It sounds like the book is what I'm searching for and I'll have a look at it. Thank you.

I had tried the iOS version but I couldn't find the the "Feature Filter (http://ark.intel.com/Search/Advanced) which is built in to the web app. If you select options in the left frame and hit the "Search", there is an "Export Data" on the top right. I was able to open the document in Office 2010 but not on the iPad.

I can always upload the file I was working with if anyone wants to see what happens.

This is just one example of the file conversions I would like to automate and I think (hope) it shouldn't be too difficult as a "first project".

It's been 17 years since I've written anything significant and most of what I did was in DBase, C+ and some Pascal. I figure it's a matter of reading the documentation and examining code to see how everything works together.

I see so many of you helping others like myself and it is inspiring and when I have an understanding of all this, I want to do the same.

Thank you all for the help and I hope I haven't missed anything.

For a reference you might want to take a look at How to Automate the Boring Stuff with Python which is a free online book with Chapter 12 – Working with Excel Spreadsheets. You can pay for a local copy but you can read the online copy for free.

once you read chapter 11, seems like you could download the site and use pythonista to view locally. He probably should have made that the last chapter :)

I'd keep Drafts - if you like Javascript and/or some of the automation it allows.

Just to prove that there is data in there somewhere... Run Writer.py first and Reader.py second... https://github.com/cclauss/Intel_ARK_database

@CCC excellent book indeed, for me the best I bought so far. I was lucky to find the Kindle version at Amazon.es. Regards

@omz. In the future updates of Phytonista, have you plans to include the openpyxl module?

@noopykat with the current version of Pythonista you can only acces to the csv module. In my Mac mini desktop I installed Phyton Anakonda, which has installed the openxl module. I tried the code that comes in the Book AUTOMATE THE BORING STUFF WITH PYTHON and available in Kindkle format, where you can learn a lot about the Python language and how to work wit EXCEL spreadsheets, PDF docs , WORD docs an CSV files.

For a quick rundown of python syntax I wrote this script. Hope that helps.

I also have recommended reading

Other code examples on my github also.