Problem with adding many tool tips to a view - objective-c

My Cocoa application has a view with about fifty colored rectangles to be displayed, which represents a heat map of some data. I cannot figure out how to add tool tips to each of the rectangles showing information about the data which that rectangle represents. I looked at the developer documentation for NSView and have added the following code:
- (NSString *)view:(NSView *)view stringForToolTip:(NSToolTipTag)tag point:(NSPoint)point userData:(void *)data
{
// use the tags to determine which rectangle is under the mouse
if (tag == blueTag) {
return NSLocalizedString(#"The Blue rectangle", #"");
}
if (tag == redTag) {
return NSLocalizedString(#"The Blue rectangle", #"");
}
// we should never get to here!
return NSLocalizedString(#"Unknown tooltip area", #"");
}
// add tooltips for the rectangles (in my drawRect method
// after the rects have been initialized etc.)
[self removeAllToolTips];
redTag = [self addToolTipRect:startingRect owner:self userData:NULL];
blueTag = [self addToolTipRect:blueRect owner:self userData:NULL];
I run into two issues:
1) when I print out the tag for the tooltips, they both show 1 as the tag even though they are for two different rectangles.
2) the stringForToolTip method is never called
Any help/suggestions would be great. Thanks!

I think the main problem is that you're adding the tool tip rects in -drawRect:. You only need to update the tooltip rects if the view is resized, not every time it's drawn. Instead, add a method to configure the tooltip rects and then call that from your view's -init method.
You can then override -setFrame: and call your tooltip configuration method after calling [super setFrame:newFrame].
I should point out that in your code both rectangles will output The Blue rectangle because the log strings are the same...

Related

Get value of "Displays have separate spaces" option in Mavericks

Is it possible to determine if the "Displays have separate spaces" option is checked in OSX Mavericks? I found the option is stored in com.apple.spaces.plist with name "spans-displays" but this code doesn't work with sandboxing:
NSUserDefaults *userDefaults = [[NSUserDefaults alloc] init];
[userDefaults addSuiteNamed:#"com.apple.spaces"];
NSLog(#"%i", [[userDefaults objectForKey:#"spans-displays"] integerValue]);
[userDefaults release];
Thanks!
To my knowledge there is no simple API to discover this, Apple have never provided comprehensive API relating to Spaces.
However, with a bit of lateral thinking you can figure it out.
What is a distinctive feature of displays having separate spaces?
There are multiple menubars.
So "Are there multiple menubars?" has the same answer as "Do displays have separate spaces?"
Is there an API to tell you if a screen has a menubar?
Again, not to my knowledge, but can we figure it out?
NSWindow has an instance method constrainFrameRect:toScreen: which given a rectangle, representing a window frame, and a screen returns an adjusted rectangle where at least part of the rectangle is visible on the screen. Furthermore, by definition if the top edge of the rectangle is above the menubar area the rectangle will be adjusted so the top edge abuts the menubar...
Which means if we pass it a rectangle abutting the top edge of the screen the returned rectangle will abut the top edge of the menubar, provided there is a menubar. If there is no menubar then the returned rectangle will have the same top edge.
So we can determine if there is a menubar and its height. One small wrinkle, as constrainFrameRect:toScreen: is an instance method we need a window, any window, to make our code work.
Here is one way to code this as a function:
CGFloat menuBarHeight(NSScreen *screen)
{
// A dummy window so we can call constrainFrameRect:toScreen
NSWindow *dummy = [[NSWindow alloc] initWithContentRect:NSMakeRect(0, 0, 100, 100)
styleMask:NSTitledWindowMask
backing:NSBackingStoreBuffered defer:YES];
// create a small rectangle at the top left corner of the screen
NSRect screenFrame = screen.frame;
NSRect testFrame = NSMakeRect(NSMinX(screenFrame), NSMaxY(screenFrame)-30, 30, 30);
// constrain the rectangle to be visible
NSRect constrainedFrame = [dummy constrainFrameRect:testFrame toScreen:screen];
// did the top edge move? delta = 0 -> no, delta > 0 - yes and by the height of the menubar
CGFloat delta = NSMaxY(testFrame) - NSMaxY(constrainedFrame);
return delta;
}
So now we can tell if a particular screen has a menubar. How about more than one screen?
Well NSScreen's class method screens returns an array of all the available screens, so all we need to do is call our menuBarHeight function on each screen and see how many menubars we find.
If we find more than 1 then we've determined that displays have separate spaces.
Here is one way to code that, again as a function:
BOOL haveIndepenantScreens()
{
BOOL foundMenuBar = NO;
for (NSScreen *aScreen in NSScreen.screens)
{
if (menuBarHeight(aScreen) > 0)
{
if (foundMenuBar)
// second menu bar found
return YES;
else
// record found first menubar
foundMenuBar = YES;
}
}
return NO; // did not find multiple menubars
}
Job done :-)
use
NSScreen.screensHaveSeparateSpaces
Not sure when this appeared in the documents, but it is there as of 2021!
One advantage of this over #CRD's excellent answer is that it works even if the user has selected 'Automatically hide and show the menu bar'
credit for the answer to #chockenberry

Resize UICollectionView cells after their data has been set

My UICollectionView cells contain UILabels with multiline text. I don't know the height of the cells until the text has been set on the label.
-(CGSize)collectionView:(UICollectionView *)collectionView
layout:(UICollectionViewLayout*)collectionViewLayout
sizeForItemAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath;
This was the initial method I looked at to size the cells. However, this is called BEFORE the cells are created out of the storyboard.
Is there a way to layout the collection and size the cells AFTER they have been rendered, and I know the actual size of the cell?
I think your are looking for the invalidateLayout method you can call on the .collectionViewLayout property of your UICollectionView. This method regenerates your layout, which in your case means also calling -collectionView: layout: sizeForItemAtIndexPath:, which is the right place to reflect your desired item size. Jirune points the right direction on how to calculate them.
An example for the usage of invalidateLayout can be found here. Also consult the UICollectionViewLayout documentation on that method:
Invalidates the current layout and triggers a layout update.
Discussion:
You can call this method at any time to update the layout information. This method invalidates the layout of the collection view itself and returns right away. Thus, you can call this method multiple times from the same block of code without triggering multiple layout updates. The actual layout update occurs during the next view layout update cycle.
Edit:
For storyboard collection view which contains auto layout constraints, you need to override viewDidLayoutSubviews method of UIViewController and call invalidateLayout collection view layout in this method.
- (void)viewDidLayoutSubviews {
[super viewDidLayoutSubviews];
[yourCollectionView.collectionViewLayout invalidateLayout];
}
subclass UICollectionViewCell and override layoutSubviews like this
hereby you will anchor cell leading and trailing edge to collectionView
override func layoutSubviews() {
super.layoutSubviews()
self.frame = CGRectMake(0, self.frame.origin.y, self.superview!.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height)
}
Hey in the above delegate method itself, you can calculate the UILabel size using the below tricky way and return the UICollectionViewCell size based on that calculation.
// Calculate the expected size based on the font and
// linebreak mode of your label
CGSize maximumLabelSize = CGSizeMake(9999,9999);
CGSize expectedLabelSize =
[[self.dataSource objectAtIndex:indexPath.item]
sizeWithFont:[UIFont fontWithName:#"Arial" size:18.0f]
constrainedToSize:maximumLabelSize
lineBreakMode:NSLineBreakByWordWrapping];
- (void)viewDidLoad {
self.collectionView.prefetchingEnabled = NO;
}
In iOS 10, prefetchingEnabled is YES by default. When YES, the collection view requests cells in advance of when they will be displayed. It leads to crash in iOS 10

iCarousel and UITextView -- blank text view

I'm using iCarousel to display editable question cards. The cards contain a UITextView for entering the question (or already contain text as you swipe through filled cards). However, when the carousel is presented and scrolled, sometimes text views appear empty.
This is due to a UITextView optimization of not drawing text offscreen. But text views in a UITableView will not suffer from this.
As many know, using setNeedsDisplay will NOT work due to the optimization, so it doesn't redraw the text.
I currently change the text view's frame by adding and then removing 1px. This forces a redraw. However, I can only do this when the item changes. iCarousel does not have a willDisplayCell delegate method. (Nick, can you add one easily? The code baffles me)
Because iCarousel is preloading many views for smoothness (which is necessary, setting iCarouselOptionVisibleItems doesn't fix anything) there doesn't seem to be anything else I can do but know when the view is about to come on screen. Suggestions?
- (UIView *)carousel:(iCarousel *)carousel viewForItemAtIndex:(NSUInteger)index reusingView:(UIView *)view
{
MIQuestionView *questionView = (MIQuestionView *)view;
if (questionView == nil)
{
MIQuestionType type = [self.testSection.questionType integerValue];
questionView = [[MIQuestionView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectNull questionType:type];
questionView.delegate = self;
}
questionView.question = [self.testSection.questions objectAtIndex:index];
return questionView;
}
The text view is embedded in the MIQuestionView. The text is set in the question setter. There's no way for me to know when it's coming onto the screen. To be clear, I don't want to resize. The text is not drawn offscreen and appear blank when coming on-screen.
Sorry, I didn't look for ambiguous code above:
- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame questionType:(MIQuestionType)type
{
if (CGRectEqualToRect(frame, CGRectNull))
frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 650, 244);
self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
...
It's an odd bug. I'm not sure if it's an issue with iCarousel or just a quirk of iOS that you need to deal with when dynamically adding and removing UITextViews from the view hierarchy.
I have a solution that's maybe a bit cleaner than the ones you've found though; Just add this to your MICardView:
- (void)didMoveToSuperview
{
if (self.superview)
{
_textView.frame = self.bounds;
}
}
This basically forces the textView to re-layout every time the cardView is recycled, and it avoids you having to do anything special in your view controller to work around the issue.

UIScrollView - Custom Map - Prevent marker subview on map from scaling with map

I have a custom map of a limited area, and have it set up to correctly show the users' location. The map is a 1600px square image within a UIScrollView.
I have a crosshair image to show the current location of the user, which at zoomScale 1.0 is the desired size. When I pinch and zoom the scrollView, the crosshair scales with it. I would like to have the subview remain the same size on screen.
I haven't been able to find any information on this, what would be the best way to go about this?
If there is anything I can provide you with to help the answer, please let me know.
Many thanks!
EDIT -
Having looked in to this further, there is a UIScrollViewDelegate method - (void)scrollViewDidEndZooming:(UIScrollView *)scrollView withView:(UIView *)view atScale:(float)scale which I tried using to take the marker's current center and size, then adjust, but this only scales at the end of the zoom. I would prefer to have the marker remain the same size while the user is zooming.
EDIT 2-
Cake has provided a great answer below, but I haven't been able to implement this in the way I imagined it would be.
I have the UIImageView as a placeholder, with alpha set to 0. This placeholder moves around relative to the map to show the user location. This operates as I expect it to. Unfortunately, this resizes with the map, as it is a subview of the map (so it stays in place).
Taking Cake's below answer, I have created the non-scaling crosshair image, and added it as a sibling subview to the scrollview. The maths, once Cake had pointed them out, were quite simple to get the new frame for the crosshair:
CGPoint ULPC = userLocationPlaceholder.center;
float zs = scrollView.zoomScale;
CGRect newFrame = CGRectMake(((ULPC.x * zs) - scrollView.contentOffset.x) - 20, ((ULPC.y * zs) - scrollView.contentOffset.y) - 20, 40, 40);
Where the image is 40points wide. This matches the centers perfectly.
The problem I now have is that I cannot get the crosshair image to stay locked to the placeholder.
I have tried using a self calling animation as such:
-(void)animeUserLocationAttachment
{
[UIView animateWithDuration:0.05
delay:0
options:(UIViewAnimationOptionAllowUserInteraction | UIViewAnimationOptionCurveLinear )
animations:^{
userLocationDotContainer.frame = newFrame;
} completion:^(BOOL finished){
// Call self
[self animateUserLocationAttachment];
}];
}
As soon as I start scrolling/zooming, this locks the animation so that the crosshair just sits in place until I release the scrolling/zooming, then it correctly updates it's location.
Is there any way I can get around this, or an alternative method I can apply?
Many thanks
EDIT 3 -
I've re-accepted Cake's answer as it covers 90% of the issue. Further to his answer I have implemented the ScrollViewDelegate methods scrollViewWillBeginDragging: andscrollViewWillBeginDecelerating: to scale the placeholder to match the current size of the crosshair relative to the map, show the placeholder (that is a subview of the map image) and hide the crosshair image. The delegate method scrollviewWillBeginZooming:withView: does not show the placeholder because it scales with the map. As Cake recommends, I'll make a new question for this issue.
The counterpart methods (scrollViewDidEndZooming:withView:atScale:, scrollViewDidEndDragging:willDecelerate: and -scrollViewDidEndDecelerating:`) all hide the placeholder, and re-show the crosshair.
The question is old but for the future similar questions I've recently resolved a similar problem applying the hint of Andrew Madsen of another post.
I'had a UIScrollView, with an UIImageView in it. Attached to the UIImageView I had many MKAnnotationView (those are my subviews that I didn't want scaling with the superview).
I did subclass UIImageView and implement setTransform: method like here:
#import "SLImageView.h"
#implementation SLImageView
- (void)setTransform:(CGAffineTransform)transform
{
[super setTransform:transform];
CGAffineTransform invertedTransform = CGAffineTransformInvert(transform);
for (id obj in self.subviews)
{
if ([obj isKindOfClass:[MKAnnotationView class]])
{
[((UIView *)obj) setTransform:invertedTransform];
}
}
}
#end
This works perfectly!
Mick.
Create another crosshair image that's associated with the view or view controller that contains the scrollview. Then have this one always snap to the center of the crosshair image you already have. Then, hide your original crosshair image. Then you can avoid having the scrollview scale the disassociated crosshair, and it should stay the same size.
Relative coordinate systems
Each view in cocoa touch has a frame property that has an origin. In order to position an object owned by one view properly relative to another view, all you have to do is figure out the differences in their origins. If one view is a subview of another, then this isn't too difficult.
Get the origin of the container view
Get the location of the subview inside of the container view
Get the origin of the subview
Calculate the difference in the positions of the origins
Get the location of the object you want to overlap (relative to the subview)
Calculate the location of the object you want to overlap relative to the container view
Move your crosshair to this position
Swift equivalent for Mick's answer:
class MapContainerView:UIView {
#IBOutlet var nonScalingViews: [UIView]!
override var transform: CGAffineTransform {
didSet {
guard let nonScalingViews = nonScalingViews else {
return
}
let invertedTransform = CGAffineTransformInvert(transform)
for view in nonScalingViews {
view.transform = invertedTransform
}
}
}
}

Mouse Enter/Exit events on partially hidden NSViews

I have a problem that I think is solvable with some hackery, but I'm very curious if there is an easier way to get the job done without having to do all of that.
I have a stack of NSViews (layer-backed, if that somehow helps provides some better solution), as shown below:
The thing here is that this is essentially a menu, but is hover-sensitive. If the user hovers over one of the exposed parts of the lower-level views, I need to perform an action depending on what that view is. It is a dynamic system so the number of stacked menu items like this may change, making static calculations more difficult. As you can see, they are basically all a copy (shape-wise) of the first item, but then rotated a bit the further you go down the stack via simple transform rotation.
My question to the SO community is what do you all think the best approach to getting mouseEntered: and mouseExited: events for just the literally visible portions of these views?
What I have attempted to do is use an NSTrackingArea on the visibleRect portion of these views, which sounds much more handy than it really is in this situation. In reality, the visibleRect seems to be "visible" for all of them, all the time. Nothing is explicitly blocked or hidden by anything more than just a partially overlapping NSView. All that happens is I get a spammed console from all of the views screaming out at once that a mouse entered their rect.
Something I am considering is making sub-NSView's of each menu item and having each of those be responsible for the tracking area... each menu item having a "strip" view along the right and bottom sides that could report, but that's still a bit of a hack and is icky.
Does anyone have a better idea? Perhaps one from experience?
Thanks!
I know you already have a solution, but I thought I would try a different approach, that didn't require getting tons of mouseMoved events. I created 3 custom views in code, added tracking rects for them and sent all mouseEntered and mouseExited messages to the same method that does a hitTest to determine which view is top most. This is the code for the content view of the window.
#implementation MainView
#synthesize oldView;
-(void)awakeFromNib {
oldView = nil;
Card *card1 = [[Card alloc]initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(150, 150, 200, 150) color:[NSColor redColor] name:#"Red Box"];
NSTrackingArea *area1 = [[NSTrackingArea alloc]initWithRect:card1.frame options:NSTrackingMouseEnteredAndExited|NSTrackingActiveInActiveApp owner:self userInfo:nil];
[self addTrackingArea:area1];
[self addSubview:card1];
Card *card2 = [[Card alloc]initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(180, 120, 200, 150) color:[NSColor yellowColor] name:#"Yellow Box"];
NSTrackingArea *area2 = [[NSTrackingArea alloc]initWithRect:card2.frame options:NSTrackingMouseEnteredAndExited|NSTrackingActiveInActiveApp owner:self userInfo:nil];
[self addTrackingArea:area2];
[self addSubview:card2];
Card *card3 = [[Card alloc]initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(210, 90, 200, 150) color:[NSColor greenColor] name:#"Green Box"];
NSTrackingArea *area3 = [[NSTrackingArea alloc]initWithRect:card3.frame options:NSTrackingMouseEnteredAndExited|NSTrackingActiveInActiveApp owner:self userInfo:nil];
[self addTrackingArea:area3];
[self addSubview:card3];
}
-(void)mouseEntered:(NSEvent *)theEvent {
[self reportTopView:theEvent];
}
-(void)mouseExited:(NSEvent *)theEvent {
[self reportTopView:theEvent];
}
-(void)reportTopView:(NSEvent *)theEvent {
id topView = [self hitTest:[theEvent locationInWindow]];
if (![topView isEqual:oldView]) {
oldView = topView;
([topView isKindOfClass:[Card class]])? NSLog(#"%#",[(Card *)topView name]):NULL;
}
}
This is the code for what I called cards (colored rectangles):
#implementation Card
#synthesize name,fillColor;
- (id)initWithFrame:(NSRect)frame color:(NSColor *)color name:(NSString *)aName{
self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
if (self) {
self.fillColor = color;
self.name = aName;
}
return self;
}
- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)rect {
[self.fillColor drawSwatchInRect:rect];
}
I finally came to a solution on Twitter via Steven Troughton-Smith. Here's how it works:
In each menu item, I am disregarding anything related to NSTrackingArea or direct mouse position interpretation. Instead, the parent controller view is handling all of the tracking and receiving mouse movement events.
Each menu item has an overridden hitTest: method that does the point conversion and returns whether or not the point being tested is within the background image (there are shadows and stuff in there, making it more difficult than the vanilla implementation).
I then setup a sort of "hover menu item changed" callback in the controller so that I can handle hover menu changes.
This was a pretty straightforward solution. Very glad I decided to stop and ask, rather than hack something together with my previous idea.
Thanks Steven!
Overlapping tracking-areas:
All you have to do is hitTest from view you are in. if this is true:
window.view.hitTest(window.mousePos) === self/*sudo code*/
What this code does is that it returns the view under the mouse position. Now all you have to do is setup a few "if" and "else" clauses to verify that your mouse is off or on the view.
Full code example:
https://gist.github.com/eonist/537ae53b86d5fc332fd3
Full description of the concept here: (perma link)
http://stylekit.org/blog/2015/12/20/Overlapping-tracking-areas/
VS the default enter and exit behaviour:
I had to add another answer to this question as this is another approach to solve the problem. This approach now also includes path assertion (think rects with round edges or other custom paths)
The answer is long winded but it works:
http://stylekit.org/blog/2016/01/28/Hit-testing-sub-views/
it involves using the apple provided method: CGPathContainsPoint(path,transform,point)
If you follow the link to that blog post and then from there check the styleKit repo on github. You will find the code need to achieve the gif animation example given above. Im providing this as a pointer to the answer as it may take you significantly less time than trying to research this on your own. I use this technique in all my UI elements and it works flawlessly.