Is it technically possible to open a URD file on a mobile device?
 

From a computing power standpoint (cpu/memory/solid state storage), do you think it would be feasible to develop a mobile iphone/ipad/andriod client that is capable of opening a urd file e.g. 1gb with 20,000 into items.

Again, I'm asking from a purely computing standpoint. As for business and product management considerations, I do not know.

These devices now, have desktop level resources.

Thanks

Yes, loading the file would be technically feasible, since it is using SQLite. But wrapping a UI to view and edit all of the various document types and data would not be so trivial.

Yes, I think I understand how much work it requires to be able to edit the different document types. I use DevonThink which is native to MacOS, iOS, and IPadOS and still has issues causing it to crash frequently.

Of course, syncing itself is another beast.

But I think developing a viewer-only client should be much less demanding. Viewing RTF, html, and plain text content on these mobile OS's should be straightforward.

Do you agree?

It depends. RTF & text seems doable, but imported HTML content is stored in a proprietary format in the URD file, and the code to write that out in standard HTML, CSS, etc., to the file system is written in C++, so the app would also need to be written in that language to leverage the existing code. I don't know how straightforward it is to write a device-agnostic app in C++. Also, porting components such as the tree, property grid, and list views which are utilizing a Win32-only control would not be trivial.

For read-only, exporting to external files might be the way to go.

Wow!
There is always complexity behind what seems so simple i.e. rendering HTML. Did not know that.

Mobile devices and OS's are now desktop-level computing devices. Having an always-on access to my work regardless of the device has become the top feature in all modern apps. Hence, the move towards the use of web technologies and frameworks i.e. Electron and Chromium components. Arguably, at the expense of performance and losing on native OS integrations.

To make UR available anytime, the best solution I've found was to use MS Azure cloud compute instance and connecting to it using remote rdp client. Worked really well, but these compute instance are not cheap. It would cost around $120/month. I may have to use one on my local home network with access from the internet via a firewall.

Thanks for taking the time to enlighten us.

Hi cnewtonne,

What works very well and costs much less than MS Azure, if not nothing, is to use a remote desktop connection option (MS RD, TeamViewer) to a running instance of your app. That is what I do when I'm away from the office for a significant time, such as on vacations. Works flawlessly.
I also use another Windows program which can 2-way sync to Evernote as mean to have access to some of the stored information, on any device, at any time.

Pierre

Great idea. I'm going to try the Teamviewer method.
Thanks for sharing.