I'm working on an app that presents an NSPopover containing a number of NSTextFields. While I can tab between these fields as I expect, the popover is selecting a particular text field to be in the editing state when it appears, and it's not the field I want to edit; I'd like to be able to define which text field is editing on popover appearance programmatically (or in Interface Builder). How can I do this?
I've set up the appropriate key view loop by connecting IB outlets for all the various text fields involved, and I've hooked up the popover's nextResponder property to the text field I want to edit first, but that doesn't seem to have an effect - the popover will still select its preferred text field instead of mine. The Window Programming Guide suggests that I set the initialFirstResponder outlet of the window to the view I want selected, but an NSPopover is not an NSWindow and has no initialFirstResponder property (unless I'm missing something obvious).
Is there any way to specify which NSTextField I want to be editing when an NSPopover appears?
I think you said you tried using -makeFirstResponder: and passing the text field. This will set the window's firstResponder, but that's not the same as initialFirstResponder and the window must have initialFirstResponder set to something other than nil in order to respect the key view loop. (Source) A slight tweak to what you tried worked for me:
- (void)popoverWillShow:(NSNotification *)notification
{
// Set the window's initialFirstResponder so that the key view loop isn't auto-recalculated.
[[myField window] setInitialFirstResponder:myField];
}
I think you can make this work by setting all the text field's that you don't want to have focus to "selectable" instead of "Editable" in IB, this should leave the one text field you want to start with as the first responder. Then, in your popoverDidShow: method, set them all back to editable, and you should be able to tab between them as usual.
Related
I have a Cocoa app that shows a "quick search" window similar to Spotlight. The window contains a visual effect view and inside a NSTextField. The text field stretches across the full width of the window.
I would like to be able to move the window by dragging inside the empty area of the text field. When dragging across text in the text field, the normal editing (i.e. selection) behavior should be used instead.
In theory, moving a window by its background is easy:
window.isMovableByWindowBackground = true
However, this behavior does not work with NSTextField, because it intercepts dragging and attempts to select text instead.
Spotlight does it somehow. Here's an example:
A couple of options that I considered without success:
Tried overriding hitTest: returning nil
Tried overriding mouseDown|Up|Dragging: and forwarding to superview
Tried to use autolayout to have text field shrink to tightly wrap around its text (could not figure this one out)
For reference, I finally found a way:
Part 1: get NSTextField to grow/shrink with its content
Override intrinsicContentSize and measure its content:
private func measure(_ string:NSAttributedString) -> NSSize
{
let cell = NSTextFieldCell(textCell: stringValue)
cell.attributedStringValue = string
return cell.cellSize
}
Part 2: view setup
Add a placeholder view right after the text field
Set up auto layout to have the placeholder view to grow and shrink
Part3: all about the details
Set up the placeholder view to use the iBeam cursor to make it appear like a text field
If the user clicks in the placeholder view, make the text field the first responder
That's it.
How to configure a view-based NSTableView to behave like so:
Rows are selectable
The user are unable to trigger edit mode by clicking a cell
Edit mode can be triggered by calling NSTableView-editColumn:row:withEvent:select: programmatically
The table view is dragged from the object library of Xcode interface builder, i.e., it uses an NSTableCellView (with an NSImageView and an NSTextField as its subviews) as the table view's cell view.
For view-based table views, -editColumn:row:withEvent:select: is relatively ineffective. It attempts to make the cell view the first responder for the window, but only certain views will accept first responder status. NSTableCellView does not, because it is not itself editable.
If you want to programmatically initiate editing in the text field within an NSTableCellView, you can do something like:
NSTableCellView* cellView = (NSTableCellView*)[tableView viewAtColumn:col row:row makeIfNecessary:YES];
if ([cellView.textField acceptsFirstResponder])
[cellView.window makeFirstResponder:cellView.textField];
To disable the user from starting editing through the UI, I think you will need to set the text field to not be editable. You would make it editable just before you initiate editing programmatically. For example, add a line cellView.textField.editable = YES; between the above two lines.
Then, you'll want to set it back to non-editable after editing ends. To do this, you can set the delegate of the text field to your controller object and implement -controlTextDidEndEditing:. Or, similarly, you can add an observer of the NSControlTextDidEndEditingNotification notification from the text field. Either way, when your code is called, you set the text field's editable property back to false. (If you don't otherwise have a reference to the text field in question, you can obtain it from the NSNotification's object property.)
I have a NSTextField and Label whose value is bind to same NSString in the view Controller
The problem here is the label only gets updated when I press Tab.
How do I make it continuous, so that what ever I type in the text box gets reflected in the label immediately?
As of now I am using -(void)controlTextDidChange:(NSNotification *)obj; selector, but I am expecting a binding only solution.
Select the relevant NSTextField in Interface Builder, then navigate to the Bindings Inspector. You need to make sure Continuously Updates Value is checked:
I'm trying to remove focus from a UITextField and even though I resign it from being first responder, I'm still not able to have the cursor not focus on the text field.
I don't have any other input on the view to move the focus to and I don't want to create a dummy one either. What is a good workaround for this?
As per the documentation.
To dismiss the keyboard, send the resignFirstResponder message to the text field that is currently the first responder. Doing so causes the text field object to end the current editing session (with the delegate object’s consent) and hide the keyboard.
If you call resignFirstResponder on your textfield then it will end the editing session and the cursor wont be focussing on that textfield.
So please verify one more time whether resignFirstResponder is getting called on that textfield which you want to remove the focus.
Please try to set your current class as delegate of your UITextField. I think you forget to set the delegate that's why it's not working as you are expecting.
I have a window with two columns of fields. On the left, there is an NSTableView and an NSTokenField, and on the right, there are two NSTextFields. I want the tab order to go down the left, then down the right. (So the order should be NSTableView, NSTokenField, NSTextField, NSTextField in my window.) However, Cocoa appears to be determining its own preferred order, going from the top to the bottom. The NSTokenField is positioned lower in the window than any other control, so it will always tab from NSTableView, to the right NSTextFields, then back to the bottom left NSTokenField.
I have tried following this section of the Apple developer documentation called Enable Tabbing Between Text Fields and dragging nextKeyView in Interface Builder between the fields in the order that I want. This seems to have absolutely zero effect on the tab order, and from what I can tell, Cocoa appears to still use its default detecting method to choose a tab order.
Any ideas? My target is 10.6+.
Make sure that you also set the initialFirstResponder outlet of the window to the first field (the table view in this case).
Sounds like you're going to have to do it programmatically:
Register for controlTextDidEndEditing notifications, identify the field by tag, and then call makeFirstResponder:fieldOfYourChoice on the window. And/or use an IBAction on the field, identifying it by sender, and call makeFirstResponder.