NSLevelIndicator fading when not highlighted - xcode

When the NSLevelIndicator (in star ratings mode) is interacted with it shows placeholder dots for where there are no stars. These dots however fade once the interaction with the NSLevelIndicator is seized. This brings with it obvious UI problems because the user is no longer aware that there is a NSLevelIndicator to be interacted with. Is there any way to force the continuous highlighting of the indicator so that the dots do not fade?

I found an answer here: http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/cocoa/202167-rating-style-levelindicator-not-showing-dots.html
Basically the control's cell needs to have its 'highlighted' property set to YES for the dots to show. Their solution involves subclassing NSLevelIndicatorCell; I found a simpler way that seems to work fine, which is to set the control's cell's highlight to YES when it's initially created, and after it's clicked and sends its action message. (You have to keep highlighting it because it loses the highlight after each click for some reason.)

Related

How to display elements inside NSCollectionView with various shapes

I am a rookie Cocoa guy. I need to design and implement a view which will show collection of labels on Mac OS using Xamarin. These labels will have a text and color associated with them. When shown inside the view, label should expand till it covers whole text and it will be shown with background and foreground colors.
I have attached the picture of this user control on Windows, you can see that labels inside the StackPanel are expanding till they cover the whole text. Hope this gives better idea about my ask.
The $64,000 question is "are these labels controls?" In other words, do you expect the user to click on these to do something, or are they just for display?
If your answer is "just for display", the solution is super simple: Use an NSTextField and programmatically add attributed text (NSAttributedString) to it. Attributed text attaches display properties to runs of text within the field; properties like "background color".
If you want these to be buttons that you can click on, then things get a lot more complicated.
Since you apparently want the button layout to "flow", you might look into imbedding buttons (well, button cells) into an NSTextField using attachments. This is normally how non-text content (say, an image) can be inserted, but with some fiddling it can actually be anything a control cell can draw. See How to insert a NSButton into a NSTextView? (inline).
Warning: this is not a "rookie" topic and will involve control cells and custom event handling.
If I were doing this, I'd probably just create NSButton objects for each label (choosing an appropriate style/look like NSRecessedBezelStyle), create a custom subclass of NSView to contain them, and then override the layout method to position all of the buttons the way I want.
To be thorough, I'd also override the intrinsic size methods so the whole thing could participate in auto-layout, based on the number and size of buttons it contained.

Seeking a simple Mac OS NSTextView example using AutoLayout

After much reading and experimenting, I still cannot get a simple TextView to resize fully in the horizontal direction using Xcode 5.0.2 in Mavericks. It resizes partially as the window is resized, then stops with long lines wrapped around even though my containing NSScrollView continues to resize as expected (it has four default constraints and no horizontal scroller).
Can anyone point me to a simple code/IB+AutoLayout example, preferably just a window containing just an NSTextView dragged in from the IB template library --- one that works? The Apple TextEdit sample code is almost irrelevant for this purpose although it does resize horizontally quite well. Also, there is the clip view for which I can find little information.
Any other tips appreciated.
Thanks.
Answering my own question:
Turns out that my problem had nothing to do with AutoLayout and little to do with NSTextView. It was the textfile I was using to test my code! This file was composed of records with tab-delimited fields.
Turns out that NSTextView comes with a default NSParagraphStyle with predefined tab stops that end at character 56 whereas my test file had tabs beyond that. Therefore, my lines wrapped around at the last defined tab no matter how much I stretched the window.
After changing my search terms, I found what I needed at the following links:
Premature line wrapping in NSTextView when tabs are used
How to have unlimited tab stops in a NSTextView with disabled text wrap
Apologies for wasting bandwidth.
Not sure why such a simple thing does not work in your case, but nevertheless here's what I did in Xcode to get an NSTextView follow window resize:
Create a new project (not document based in my case but it doesn't really make a difference)
Drag a NSTextView from the palette to your window. Align all four edges with the window edges.
Open the "Add constraints" pop-up (second button from the segmented control on the bottom-right part of your IB view.
Each of the four spacing constraints should show a number equal to the distance of your text view from the container window. If you aligned them, this number should be either 0 or -1. Click the down arrow for each of them and select "Use Current Canvas Value". Do it for all four. Make sure no other constraints are selected.
Click on "Add constraints" on the bottom of the panel.
Run your project. Your textview should resize with the window.
Also, as Jay's comment mentions, make sure you do not have any "leftover" constraints in your view. You can check this either by observing Xcode's warnings, or manually by inspecting your view's constraints by going to the Size Inspector tab (4th tab on the Utilities bar).
If you need to have your textview arranged in a more complex layout, it might be worth taking a look at the AutoLayout Guide.

NSWindow and text smoothing in NSTableView cell view

I'm writing an OS X app and have a problem with font smoothing in separate window.
I have a text field where you put text and suggestion window which pops up with a list of suggestions according to what you wrote. I'm using View-cell based NSTableView to display those suggestions and SFBPopoverWindowController to display it as a "popup" window (tried other classes with the same effect). When rows are first drawn they look fine but after I select them (keyboard or mouse) the font changes it's weight. It's only visual - like you would change smoothing method on the font, not it's bold setting.
"Music note" is the selected cell here
What's even more strange is that after I hide and show the window 3 times everything works fine from that point on.
Again - "Music note" is the selected cell.
The selection is done by overwriting NSTableRowView class and its drawSelectionInRect: method but I tried with drawing everything inside custom NSTableCellView class and it didn't help. The text is standard NSTextField - nothing's changed there.
The SFBPopoverWindow (and it's controller) are created once and reused with styleMask NSBorderlessWindowMask, backing NSBackingStoreBuffered, defer set to YES. The only change in SFBPopoverWindowController I made was to turn off window becoming key window but it doesn't change anything.
It might be related to the way a table view draws it's selected cells (setSelectionHightLightStyle:). Try to set the style to None/ NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleNone in your code or IB / Storyboard-file and draw the selection yourself (in a NSTableRowView subclass).
Background: When you use NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleRegular or NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleSourceList the table view assumes that you use the standard selection behaviour and appearance and does some magic to support that.
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UPDATE
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My previous answer is still valid but since it only describes the problem and hints at a workaround, I wanted to add a real solution. If you want to use NSTableViewSelectionHighlightStyleRegular for your table view (with custom font and colors), you need a way to 'disable' the system magic that comes into place once your row is highlighted. One proposed solution is to decline the first responder status. It has a lot of drawbacks and isn't a good solution at all.
So, let's have a closer look at the system 'magic' that kicks in as soon as the row will be highlighted: NSTableRowView has a property interiorBackgroundStyle that is – according to the documentation – 'an indication of how the subviews should draw'. Furthermore 'This value is dynamically computed based on the set of properties set for the NSTableRowView. Subclassers can override this value when they draw differently based on the currently displayed properties. This method can also be called to determine what color a subview should use, or alternatively, NSControls can have the -backgroundStyle set on their cell to this value.'
I assume that this style will be handed down the subview hierarchy and causes your text fields to look odd. The system assumes that a highlighted cell has a dark background and changes the interiorBackgroundStyle to dark. Other controls try to adapt accordingly.
I think there are two solutions to this problem:
1) Override interiorBackgroundStyle in your NSTableRowView subclass and return the style that fits your interface (in my case it's .light because my highlight color is a very bright blue). This worked for me.
2) If changing the whole style is a bit too much because you only want certain elements to not change their style, you may only need to adjust these subclasses. I haven't tried this yet.

Adding controls to NSTextView and binding them to (ranges of) characters

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.

NSLevelIndicator with text on It?

How can I add text on top of a NSLevelIndicator? [the NSLevelIndicator is in my statusbar, if that matters]
The best way to add text to your NSLevelIndicator user interface is by adding a separate Label NSTextField. The NSLevelIndicator control does not have a title or other text associated with it.
From within Interface Builder, just grab a Label and drag it to your window above or beside the NSLevelIndicator.
Contrary to the correct answer to your previous question, if you want to use an NSLevelIndicator as a background and draw text on top of it, you're better off creating a custom view that owns and uses an NSLevelIndicatorCell for the background drawing.
You might also consider drawing the background yourself; e.g., fill with your choice of green/yellow/red, and then draw a white gradient on top of it. This is more appropriate if you're not really indicating a level with your level indicator.
Also, don't forget to test your application with Sim Daltonism, to make sure that the text is still readable to color-blind users.

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