Is it possible to draw strings with custom paragraph styles in CATextLayer? - cocoa

Question

I want to draw a list like this:
1. List item 1
2. List item 2
3. List item 3
Here is my code:
NSTextList *list = [[NSTextList alloc] initWithMarkerFormat:#"{decimal}" options:0];
NSMutableParagraphStyle *paragraph = [[NSParagraphStyle defaultParagraphStyle] mutableCopy];
[paragraph setTextLists:[NSArray arrayWithObject:list]];
[list release];
NSDictionary *attributes = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:paragraph, NSParagraphStyleAttributeName, nil];
NSString *string = #"List item 1\nList item 2\nList item 3"
NSMutableAttributedString *attrString = [[[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:string attributes:attributes] autorelease];
[paragraph release];
Then I set the attrString to the string property of CATextLayer, but paragph style isn't applied to the result.

Answer 1

Yes, it's possible. You can create NSAttributedString by using either initWithHTML* or initWithRTF* method.
If you want to create list programmatically, you can use NSTextTab in tandem with NSTextList. But you have to manually format string:
NSTextList *list = [[NSTextList alloc] initWithMarkerFormat:#"square" options:0];
NSMutableParagraphStyle *paragraph = [[NSParagraphStyle defaultParagraphStyle] mutableCopy];
[paragraph setTextLists:[NSArray arrayWithObject:list]];
NSTextTab *t1 = [[NSTextTab alloc] initWithType:0 location:11.0f];
NSTextTab *t2 = [[NSTextTab alloc] initWithType:0 location:36.0f];
[paragraph setTabStops:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:t1, t2, nil]];
NSDictionary *attributes = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:paragraph, NSParagraphStyleAttributeName, nil];
NSString *string = #"\t▪\tList item 1\n\t▪\tList item 2\n\t▪\tList item 3";
NSMutableAttributedString *attrString = [[[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:string attributes:attributes] autorelease];
[paragraph release];
[list release];
[t1 release];
[t2 release];