I have an NSTableView which holds a bunch of cells. Is it possible (within limits of sandbox) to be able to drag one of these cells to say a text field in Safari and have it insert text from that cell?
Definitely possible. Check out the Drag and Drop Programming Guide and the Pasteboard Programming Guide.
Related
I have an app which allows users to send messages to each. The process is accomplished by saving the sent messages in a local SQLite database, while actually sending the messages to a database and using push notifications to send the message to the recipient's SQLite database. The set up I have works fine. However, what I am confused about is how to set up the actual interactive UI for the user (I am using XCode). I figured it should be a UITableView with each table cell representing a message. However, with this approach I run into a few requirements:
Variable TextView Sizes
Just as with regular iOS messaging, the TextView's size needs to be variable, adjusting its dimensions to fit all of the text in each message. I do not know how to accomplish this. I have a general understanding of how to generally vary sizes, but no clue how to dynamically have it based on the text within that view.
Variable TextView Positions
Again, just as with regular iOS messaging, the textview needs to be offset to either the right or left side depending on whether the sender was the user or who the are conversing with, respectively. I also do not know how to do this, because it changes the center of the textview.
Non-selectability
Xcode allows cells to be pressed. Handling what happens after this selection can be achieved by the didSelectRowatIndexPath tableView function. I can simply not implement this, but clicking on the cell causes it to turn darker to indicate it has been pressed. I would like to eliminate this while retaining the ability to, say, select some of the text and copy and paste it or whatever (just like messaging works normally on your phone).
Other Approaches?
This is the real meat of the question. I have considered the above approach because that is all that I have been able to come up with based on my limited experience with XCode UI elements. If there is a better approach (perhaps even a pod or framework) for this purpose I would love to hear it. I do not need the messaging UI to look amazing, just clean and crisp.
I suggest the following:
Variable TextView Sizes:
I assume you do use auto layout. If you don’t yet, please consider using it since it make life much easier!
If you use a UITableView, you can adjust the height of its UITableViewCells dynamically, depending on the actual content by using self-sizing cells. You can find a tutorial how to do this here.
Variable TextView Positions:
I assume you have a UITextView within a table view cell. In this case, you have to set auto layout constraints to the borders of the cell’s contentView. If you define a custom subclass of a UITableViewCell, you can define in this class 2 IBOutlet properties that are linked to say the left and the right layout constraints (e.g. var leftLayoutConstraint: NSLayoutConstraint). Then, you can set the constraint’s constant property as required when the cell is laid out, i.e. in the layoutSubviews function of the custom table view cell.
Non-selectability:
I am not sure what you mean by „I can simply not implement this“. Please make sure that you set the delegate property of the UITableView to the view controller where you want to handle cell selection. Selecting a cell changes the cells color by default, but you can change this: In the storyboard, select your table view’s prototype cell, and open Xcode’s utility pane (top rightmost button). Under „Table view cell“ you find „Selection“ that you can set to „None“.
I hope this helps!
I have found that the text in a table view doesn't grow when the user resizes the column. (Or for that matter shrink if he shrinks the column, because the truncation ellipses then vanish.) Having gathered that this is something to do with constraints, my solution has been to uncheck Use Auto Layout (in the xib's file inspector). Not a big deal, but it comes just when I was beginning to think I might have mastered Autolayout.
Is that really the only way to do this?
The table is view-based, and gets its data from Core Data via an array controller. The text is displayed in an NSTextField.
It is as you have found out yourself.
If you want to know/learn more about NSTableview-behavior search for "TableViewVariableRowHeights" and "TableViewLinks" in Apples documentation and download the samples.
This question appears to be answered in:
How to Expand NSTableCellView Width When Resizing Column in NSTableView
summary: add horizontal constraints to the table view cell
see the link for screenshots
When editing code, Xcode is capabale of displaying in-text controls, like drop down buttons which can show context menu's. I've seen other OS X apps that handle text capable of similar features. See the attached sample.
I presume this effect is obtained using NSTextAttachmentCell - although I'm not sure whether this is the proper way to implement this.
For my own app I would like to use this technique as well.
I have the following questions:
Is NSTextAttachmentCell the correct way to implement such a feature? If not, what would be?
How do I attach a control -comparable to the one in the above sample- to a specific range of text so that its location within NSTextView is dynamic and follows layout actions?
I found this which gives some hints but does not cover the attachment to specific text ranges.
Although NSTextAttachmentCell will work, it has a disadvantage: the cell will become just a glyph in the text which was not what I wanted. It distorts the layout of the text, is selectable etc. I wanted the cell to be drawn over the text, just like the behaviour in Xcode.
The challenge was to find a way of translating a point from a Mouse Moved event to the position of a particular string of characters inside the NSTextView.
After some more digging I found a little gem in Apple's demo apps called LayoutManagerDemo. This demo shows a custom subclass of NSTextView capable of highlighting individual characters, words and lines while the mouse is hoovering its view. From there on it was pretty easy to fade in a button at the required NSPoint and then show a popup menu with some options.
I am learning Cocoa and trying to create an application for Mac that displays a simple book list. Each book is an NSView with its cover image, title and author. I want to present this list as a NSTableView with a single column and a book view in each cell. However i can't yet figure out how to display a custom view inside a table cell in interface builder or programmatically. Any tips would be very appreciated :)
Inso.
If all of your "book views" are the same size, why not use NSCollectionView / NSCollectionViewItem? It's a much cleaner solution (provided they're all sized the same).
Assuming a collection view wouldn't be a better solution, what you need to do is to write a custom cell. The column owns exactly one such cell, which the table view will use to draw the column's value for each row.
(If you came from the iPhone, yes, this is completely different from UITableView. Each NSTableColumn has exactly one cell, which it uses for every row.)
If you're using your NSView class somewhere else, then you could make it into a subclass of NSControl and have it use another instance of the same cell class. Like most controls, all the real work would be done by the cell, which enables you to reuse that behavior in multiple controls (your single control and your table view).
See Control and Cell Programming Topics for more info.
Apple added view-based table views in Lion, so you should be able do this natively with NSTableView, now.
(You still can't put an NSView in an NSCell—that wouldn't make sense. But you can have views instead of cells in a table view.)
Let's say I have a split view, and I want to fill half of it with a table view (a fairly common use case, I would think). Is there any way to tell the table view to size itself to fit the split view or do I really have to size it manually?
I've done this, the way Jon Hess mentions first. Assuming you're using Interface Builder version 3:
Drag and resize your GUI (tableview from what I understand?) component to fit into the enclosing area the way you want it.
Click it to select it.
Press Command-Shift-I to open the inspector window for this GUI component. The inspector window should now actually show that you've selected a "Scroll View".
Click the "ruler" heading to be able to set the sizing. You'll see to the right an animated representation of how your GUI component will behave within its enclosing GUI component, and to the left another represenation of the same, without animation, but with four springs and two struts that you can turn on or off.
Turn all six things on, making them red.
Voilà :-)
It's generally easier to create the subviews first, then use the Layout/Embed Objects In/Split View menu item to create the split view around them.
As far as I know, doing it manually is the only way to go. However, if you turn on "snap to cocoa guidelines", the inner view will snap to the edges of the enclosing view as you drag towards them. This makes it easier than having to manually mouse the edges into place, or manually edit the sizes to match.
You can set all of the springs and struts of the table view to "on" in the size inspector and that will cause the table view to fill the split view. Alternatively, you can use the outline view in the main document window to place the tableview's enclosing scroll view directly into the splitview instead of in an intermediary custom view.