Open account preferences panel in front of actual modal window in cocoa - objective-c

Question

I have a Mac app with a preferences window. The preferences window is opened modally
-(IBAction)displayPreferencesWindow:(id)sender{
if (!pc) {
pc = [[PreferencesController alloc] initWithWindowNibName:#"PreferencesController"];
pc.delegate = self;
}
NSWindow *pcWindow = [pc window];
[NSApp runModalForWindow: pcWindow];
[NSApp endSheet: pcWindow];
[pcWindow orderOut: self];
}
In the preferences Window I have a button that opens the account preferences panel
- (IBAction)openSystemPrefs:(id)sender {
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openFile:#"/System/Library/PreferencePanes/Accounts.prefPane"];
}
The problem is that the account preferences panel does not open in front of the actual Window. How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

This is kind of weird, and goes against the comments in the header, but try using this instead:
- (BOOL)openFile:(NSString *)fullPath withApplication:(NSString *)appName andDeactivate:(BOOL)flag;
From the comments there:
Open a file at some path. If you use the variant without the
withApplication: parameter, or if you pass nil for this parameter, the
default application is used. The appName parameter may be a full path
to an application, or just the application's name, with or without the
.app extension. If you pass YES for andDeactivate:, or call a variant
without this parameter, the calling app is deactivated before the new
app is launched, so that the new app may come to the foreground unless
the user switches to another application in the interim. Passing YES
for andDeactivate: is generally recommended.
So it sounds like your app should be deactivating (since you're calling a variant without the andDeactivate: parameter) but I would try explicitly using the variant with that parameter, just to be sure.

Answer 2

Empirically, it appears that the launched application will not activate if the launching application is presenting modal UI, at least not when using the NSWorkspace API. I was able to hack something up using AppleScript that appears to achieve the desired results:
- (IBAction)doStuff:(id)sender
{
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openFile:#"/System/Library/PreferencePanes/Accounts.prefPane"];
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(0, 0), ^{
NSString* s = #"tell application \"System Preferences\" to activate";
NSAppleScript* as = [[[NSAppleScript alloc] initWithSource: s] autorelease];
NSDictionary* error = nil;
if ([as compileAndReturnError: &error])
{
(void)[as executeAndReturnError: &error];
}
});
}
I dispatched it to the background queue because it takes a few hundred milliseconds to compile and run the AppleScript and it's a little conspicuous if done synchronously (the button stays highlighted longer than you expect).
If you were feeling really masochistic, you could probably get the script compiling phase out of it (i.e. quicker) by conjuring up the equivalent AppleEvents and sending them directly, but this appeared to achieve the desired effect, even while presenting modal UI in the launching application.