Alibata Guide started as a concept back on 4/26/09, when I saw a Wikipedia article regarding an ancient Filipino writing called Alibata (also called Baybayin). I did a search on iTunes App Store, and did not find anything related to Alibata. This intrigued me, since most of the Filipinos are not aware of this beautiful, elegant writing which most schools in the Philippines neglected to teach. I for one, feel that a part of my cultural heritage was taken away from me, by the Philippine education system not teaching Alibata to me during my youth in the Philippines.
Fast forward to 2009, and I felt a surge of anger and also a sense of purpose that I need to promote Alibata using the most user friendly and extremely fun interface platform ever created --- the iPhone. I have had my eyes developing apps for the iPhone, but have put it off for a while due to the cost of having to upgrade my Mac and also having to pay for the Apple developer fees. Through the determination of letting people know more about Alibata, I was able to develop the Alibata Guide program in a course of less than two weeks.
To build the program, I used Xcode and the Interface Builder provided by the iPhone SDK. The iPhone uses Cocoa Touch based on the Objective C language. I have had C, C++ and C# experience before, but Objective C was a bit different. It uses classes like C++ and C# do, but the syntax formats are noticeably different. It can bit a bit overwhelming sometimes to look at a Foundation framework class name that seems like 100 characters long. Cocoa programmers, you know what I mean!
To prevent copyright issues, I decided to hand-draw the Alibata symbols / scripts myself using a Bamboo Fun CTE-450 tablet, an inexpensive yet highly functional way of drawing or writing in an electronic environment. The software I used for drawing was the free open source software called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which can be downloaded for free on public domain software sites. This part took me the longest to do, since I want to get the Alibata symbols proportionately right. It sometimes took me 20 times to draw a single symbol, because I wanted to get the right calligraphy-like look for it. I treated this stage in the development with extreme care, because there is beauty in the symbols, and I wanted to share my yearning to learn this long, lost, forgotten ancient writing to everyone.
I submitted Alibata Guide on 5/7/09. As this was my first app, I had a lot of anxious nights whether or not Apple decides to approve or reject my submission. I did multiple tests prior to the submission, to make sure that there are no bugs. However, there were also other things that the app can be rejected for, besides coding. In any case, I have had a few sleepless nights worrying what Apple might think of my first app.
Today (5/14/09), I learned that Apple has approved my app! I quickly went to the Apple iTunes App Store, did a search for “Alibata”, and there it was. My jaw dropped. My name is published on the Apple iTunes Store. Just how cool is that! I am also my own first customer, and I gladly paid $0.99 for my own app, which I downloaded to my iTunes app library. I hope you do too, so you can learn Alibata for the sake of bringing back a part of a lost cultural heritage.
Mabuhay!
