Steven, Thanks - the project needed a revisit...it grew from 2 checkboxes to nearly 40...time to re-examine a few things!
Thanks again for the tip....so deep into the forest I could not see the trees... -j On Feb 27, 2010, at 1:23 PM, Steven Degutis wrote: > First of all, you may want to look into NSMatrix to accomplish this task > instead of using individual NSButtons, both for performance reasons and (more > importantly) to use the Cocoa API as it is intended (this is why NSMatrix was > created, so it handles this relatively well). > > Secondly, if you use NSMatrix, or even NSTableView (which may be a better > layout in this case), you can populate the items programmatically. Thus, you > can have an array of model objects representing the data, with properties > such as "userVisibleTitle" and "representedCommandLineOptionString" or > something to that effect (and possibly an ID property too if need be, but > probably not). Then you could supply these to the views rather easily, and > readily fetch and display any property for a given object. Read more about > this in the MVC section of Apple's docs. > > Also, regarding your feature to toggle the display between power users and > "normal users", there's a few options. You could do this via tooltips, or you > could have an option to choose to display the "normal" titles versus the > command line options. But keep in mind, power users will probably prefer the > command line anyway, usually. So I wouldn't put too much thought into this. > > -Steven > > On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 8:46 AM, Jeremy Matthews <jeremymatth...@mac.com> > wrote: > So I have a application that I am getting ready to put some finishing touches > on, but there are one or two things I'd like to do differently...er, better. > > It is a simple tool (Cocoa Desktop app) with a slew of checkboxes (around 40 > in a separate window) that act as parameters on a command. While I show the > user-friendly wording "yard work", behind the scenes I actually use > parameters like "-lawngeneral" (if that checkbox is selected it does a check > and provides the internal naming scheme when it builds the full command). > Since the latter are part of the internal logic (and affect other systems), > they cannot be changed at this time. But, I would like to be able to give > those nsbuttons a second property that does not change depending on selection > (so, alternateTitle would not work), just to make life easier when > referencing said items. In NSMenu land, someone mentioned using > setRepresentedItems, which worked great in my needs there...is there a > similar feature for NSButton (specifically checkboxes)? > > Also, it would be nice if I could intercept an nsevent that changed their > text from the user-friendly version to the internal logic titles - if only > for some better understanding by power users (like, holding down the option > key at any point in time). I've mucked around with some examples, but it > seems like most depend on a a specific method and not silently observing in > the background, like clicking on a button. > > How would you handle the first request, create a dictionary, or is there > another method I missed? > And the second, I'm not even sure.. > > Any ideas? > > _______________________________________________ > > Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) > > Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. > Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com > > Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: > http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/steven.degutis%40gmail.com > > This email sent to steven.degu...@gmail.com > > > > -- > Steven Degutis > http://www.thoughtfultree.com/ > http://www.degutis.org/ _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
