Is there are non-deprecated way to access font collections for OS X 10.11? - cocoa

Question

I was looking at adding an option for sorting available fonts by user-defined font collections (I wish Pages and Keynote did this!), but it looks like the old ways of accessing these collections are being deprecated in 10.11:
https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Classes/NSFontManager_Class/index.html#//apple_ref/occ/clm/NSFontManager/
Is there a new way of accessing and using those font collections?

Answer 1

I've recently been working with font collections, so I may have some info for you.
The NSFontCollection API is kind of strange. It offers access to "Named Font Collections," but the names associated with said collections aren't attached to them. If that makes no sense, it's because it doesn't. However, let me try to break it down:
To add a system-wide font collection:
// Create a font descriptor (or descriptors) with whatever attributes you want
let descriptor = NSFontDescriptor(fontAttributes: nil)
// Create a font collection with the above descriptor(s)
let collection = NSFontCollection(descriptors: [descriptor])
// In Objective-C, the `+ showFontCollection:withName:visibility:error:`
// method returns `YES` if the collection was shown or `NO` if an error occurred.
// The error is passed via pointer supplied to the `error:` parameter.
//
// In Swift, the method returns `()` (aka nil literal), and instead of passing
// the error in a pointer, it `throws`, so you have to wrap the call in a `do`
// statement and catch the error (or suppress error propagation via `try!`):
do {
try NSFontCollection.showFontCollection(collection: NSFontCollection,
withName: "Visible to All Users", visibility: .Computer)
}
catch {
print("There was an error showing font collection. Info: \(error)")
}
To add a user-visible font collection:
Repeat above steps, substituting .Computer with .User:
do {
try NSFontCollection.showFontCollection(collection: NSFontCollection,
withName: "Visible to the Current User", visibility: .User)
}
catch {
print("There was an error showing font collection. Info: \(error)")
}
To add a non-persistent font collection:
Repeat above steps, substituting .Computer with .Process:
do {
try NSFontCollection.showFontCollection(collection: NSFontCollection,
withName: "Visible for Current Process", visibility: .Process)
}
catch {
print("There was an error showing font collection. Info: \(error)")
}
Next steps…
Once you have a collection, you can change it all you want using the NSMutableFontCollection class. Continuing with the example above, you would do something like this:
let mutableCollection = collection.mutableCopy() as! NSMutableFontCollection
let boldTrait = [NSFontWeightTrait: NSFontWeightBold]
let boldAttributes = [NSFontTraitsAttribute: boldTrait]
let boldDescriptor = NSFontDescriptor(fontAttributes: newAttributes)
mutableCollection.addQueryForDescriptors([boldDescriptor])
At this point, the API gets weird again. We've added descriptors to our "named collection," but nothing in the UI is going to show up until you "show" the font collection again. In other words, after making any changes, you have to call showFontCollection(_:withName:visibility:) again.
Likewise, if you want to remove/delete a collection, you have to call hideFontCollectionWithName(_:visibility:). Despite its innocuous name, this method completely removes a persistent collection from disk, so be careful.
Next next steps…
In subsequent launches of your app, you can retrieve any persistent collection using the NSFontCollection(name:visibility:) method, like so:
// Retrieve collection created at an earlier time
let collectionOnDisk = NSFontCollection(name: "Visible to All Users", visibility: .Computer)
I think I've covered most of it, but if I've missed something, or if you have questions, just let me know. Good luck!

Answer 2

There are classes NSFontCollection and NSFontDescriptor.
Look into the NSFontManager header file of Xcode 7 (via ⇧⌘O) to get more information about the deprecated methods and their replacement.