IOS Multitasking on iPad

[dranobob]

I'm considering picking up the Pythonista app so that I can learn python while I'm on the move. Does anyone know if the app supports iOS multitasking? I'd like to have both Pythonista and my Python book at the same time.

[dranobob]

@Webmaster4o

Thanks for your suggestion. Opening the book (PDF) in the console sounds like a decent enough workaround. If it does support split-view, I'll be sure to come back and reply here.

[Webmaster4o]

@dranobob I can help you with that, it may not be completely straightforward. If it's a file that isn't online publicly, you'll have to import it into the Pythonista file system before opening it. That takes a little effort, but nothing too bad.

[Olaf]

As to original question:
You can have the narrow band on the side but not the iPad 50/50 multitasking split screen. I recall (but cannot retrieve details) that omz chose not to implement multitasking in 2.0 because that would limit Pythonista's game-playing capabilities

[Webmaster4o]

@Olaf I don't see it there.... You sure?

[Webmaster4o]

@dranobob If your PDF is in iBooks, iBooks has very limited sharing options for PDFs. The simplest way I've found to import from iBooks is to email it to myself from iBooks, and then Mail has the option to open in Pythonista. A real inconvenience, but I have no power over iBooks 🙃

Once you have it imported, you can use something like

import webbrowser,os
webbrowser.open("file://"+os.path.expanduser("~/Documents/book.pdf"))

If the PDF is online, it's much simpler. Without any importing, this will work:

import webbrowser
webbrowser.open("http://programmingcomputervision.com/downloads/ProgrammingComputerVision_CCdraft.pdf")

Once you put the console in "docked" mode, it will look something like this:

I am fully able to type in the code field without closing my book. That book is "Programming Computer Vision with Python," the free PDF of which I've imported to Pythonista locally as a file.

You can zoom, in case that looks horrendously small to you.

[Olaf]

@Webmaster4o, I wasn't completely sure, so I checked. It's on Twitter and mentions split screen, not multitasking, making is less easy to find, but I found it via @viticci review

[Webmaster4o]

@Olaf No, I meant I didn't see it under the SlideOver menu, the "Narrow band on the side"

[Olaf]

@Webmaster4o, ah, the ambiguity of "it" ;-)
I can have Pythonista as the main on the ¾ left-hand side of my iPad Air 2, and any (multitasking-capable) other app on the ¼ right-hand. Not the other way around, as only multitasking-capable apps can do so, and Pythonista isn't (as per previous post).
However, your solution inside Pythonista is better as that remains if you return to the code, whereas the other way it disappears.

[Webmaster4o]

@Olaf ah, clear now. I was looking between "Pixelmator" and "Reminders" and not seeing anything :) If this is true, that's a great alternative to docked console. That will be way better.

[ccc]

On my Pythonista version 2.0.1 (201000) on iOS 9.2.1 on a 64-bit iPad5,4 with a screen size of (1024 x 768) * 2

[Webmaster4o]

@ccc this is SlideOver. We were talking about full multitasking with a 3:1 ratio. SlideOver is not ideal, because one cannot type code without closing the book.