I am trying to dynamically change the value of a label in an ApplicationModel dynamically during the running of my program.
I have tried:
(self builder labelAt: #Label4) labelString: 'Dynamic text here'.
But get a labelString not understood error.
When I run:
(self builder labelAt:#Label4)
I get "UndefinedObject". Which obviously suggests that I am not returning my Label object.
Try
(self builder componentAt: #Label4) widget labelString: 'whatever'
or
(self widgetAt: #Label4) labelString: 'whatever'
If you have a Model for your changing value it's pretty easy to use read-only InputField bound to your model. I dare to say having a Model for a changing value is generally a good idea.
If you define InputField as read-only and withou a border, it will look exactly like a regular text label. From a user's point of view the only difference is in ability to select and copy text from read-only input field, which is useful in many cases.
On the other hand, Labels can have a much richer look. You can use Text, ComposedText or Image for them.
Related
I am a relatively new user of Tabulator so please forgive me if I am asking anything that, perhaps, should be obvious.
I have a Tabulator report that I am able to print and create as a PDF, but the report's formatting (as shown on the screen) is not used in either output.
For printing I have used printAsHtml and printStyled=true, but this doesn't produce a printout that matches what is on the screen. I have formatted number fields (with comma separators) and these are showing correctly, but the number columns should be right-aligned but all of the columns appear as left-aligned.
I am also using Tree View where the tree rows are coloured differently to the main table, but when I print the report with a tree open it colours the whole table with the tree colours and not just the tree.
For the PDF none of the Tabulator formatting is being used. I've looked for anything similar to the printStyled option, but I can't see anything. I've also looked at the autoTable option, but I am struggling to find what to use.
I want to format the print and PDF outputs so that they look as close to the screen representation as possible.
Is there anywhere I could look that would provide examples of how to achieve the above? The Tabulator documentation is very good, but the provided examples don't appear to explain what I am trying to do.
Perhaps there are there CSS classes that I am missing or even mis-using? I have tried including .tabulator-print-table in my CSS, but I am probably not using it correctly. I also couldn't find anything equivalent for producing PDFs. Some examples would help immensely.
Thank you in advance for any advice or assistance.
Formatting is deliberately not included in these, below i will outline why:
Downloaders
Downloaded files do not contain formatted data, only the raw data, this is because a lot of the formatters create visual elements (progress bar, star formatter etc) that cannot be replicated sensibly in downloaded files.
If you want to change the format of data in the download you will need to use an accessor, the accessorDownload option is the one you want to use in this case. The accessors transform the data as it is leaving the table.
For instance we could create an accessor that prepended "Mr " to the front of every name in a column:
var mrAccessor= function(value, data, type, params, column, row){
return "Mr " + value;
}
Assign it to a columns definition:
{title:"Name", field:"name", accessorDownload:mrAccessor}
Printing
Printing also does not include the formatters, this is because when you print a Tabulator table, the whole table is actually rebuilt as a standard HTML table, which allows the printer to work out how to layout everything across multiple pages with column headers etc. The downside of this is that it is only loosely styled like a Tabulator and so formatted contents generated inside Tabulator cells will likely break when added to a normal td element.
For this reason there is also a accessorPrint option that works in the same way as the download accessor but for printing.
If you want to use the same accessor for both occasions, you can assign the function once to the accessor option and it will be applied in both instances.
Checkout the Accessor Documentation for full details.
I have a localization string with a placeholder:
Verb {0}
I use this string in my view-model to return a string to my view that, in turn, is displayed in a TextBlock. Easy enough. But a new requirement has arisen saying that the "Verb" portion (everything other than the placeholder's inserted value) be displayed in bold.
Using a string with placeholders seems like the typical and easiest way to indicate word order. So the first question, then, is: where should I parse the localization string in order to add the bold formatting? The parse operation will need knowledge of the original placeholder's location. So far, the view-model has been responsible for utilizing the localization strings by using string.Format to insert values and return its result to the view. If I leave this responsibility in the view-model, as is probably necessary, then the view-model also needs to return rich text.
Is binding to rich text even supported by RichTextBlock? Even if it is supported, I've never before had a view-model return formatted text before. It initially feels sacrilegious to a follower of MVVM-ism, but perhaps upon further consideration I may find it acceptable.
What's the best way to add bold formatting to a localized string that has placeholders? Is returning rich text from the view-model the best way?
My tableViewController with a list of items of various types will provide a button to show a modal dialog box. This dialog box (similar to alert view) will provide the user with an exclusive choice from a list of 6 options.
Based on what the user chooses and confirms, the list in the main tableview controller screen will be filtered down to only show items that match the selected type.
At the moment, I have those six types listed in a typedefed enum. So far so good.
However I also need to be able to populate my custom dialog box with six nsstrings whose names will match the types used in the enumeration.
How to reconciliate this enum with my requirement for a source of those strings, but in such a way that I would ensure some level of consistency between the two? I do not want to hardcode anything.
You need a helper method that returns a string for each enum value. This should be written to deal with possible localization. All of your data and event handling should be based on the enum value. The string should be used for display.
The helper method should take an enum value and use a switch statement to return the proper string.
I can think of a few:
Change the enum to a bunch of strings. This makes things a bit tedious if they need to be integers too (-[NSArray indexOfObject:]).
Make a C array of strings. This lets you use C99's handy syntax:
NSString * const names[] = {
[Foo] = #"Foo",
[Bar] = #"Bar",
};
Autogenerated code to do the above.
Caveats:
Both of these will make i18n rather painful. This might not be relevant if it's contract work that will only need to be in one language, but it's Bad Practice.
Using button indexes as keys works until you decide you need to remove buttons in the middle. String keys work much better in the general case (I wrote a UIAlertView/UIActionSheet wrapper that accept (key,title) pairs and returned the key instead of the button index).
I take your remark that you "do not want to hardcode anything" to mean that you don't want any string constants in your code. So:
You could simply assign the strings to your sheet's UI elements (perhaps check boxes, for example) and give those UI elements tag values that match your enumeration (something you could query as your sheet closes). This has the additional benefit that you can easily localize the sheet.
Or:
If you want to keep the strings separate from your sheet, you could create a .strings file (perhaps you could call it Enumeration.strings or some such) formatted something like this:
"001" = "string one";
"002" = "string two";
.
.
"010" = "string ten";
and you could then retrieve the strings using your enumeration values like this:
NSString *myString = NSLocalizedStringFromTable([NSString stringWithFormat:#"%03d", myEnumerationValue], #"Enumeration", #"");
but then you'd have to have a way of plugging the strings into your UI, keeping track of UI elements through IBOutlets. Note that I used three decimal places here; perhaps you could get by with two, or even one. Finally, you get the ability to localize as in the first suggestion.
Is there a way to ellipsize the text content of an NSTextField, instead of truncate?
So instead of:
The quick brown fox jumped over
It would say:
The quick brown fox jumped ...
I can't find anything in the documentation for this. What am I missing?
UPDATE:
Is there any way to ellipsize AND wordwrap--in other words, have multiple lines and ellipsize the last?
So this is a great question! Even though its exposed in IB, its not a property on the view or any subview. Instead its buried as a property on the cell used by NSTextField. So if you ask that object for its cell, you can then read or set the value: lineBreakMode.
Look in the class description for NSCell for all the options - truncateCenter is one (to get center ellipsis).
EDIT: the following thoughts were prompted by the updated question. Personally, I think trying to get that google code is way overkill and perhaps you can do something less complex by creating a mini-custom textField.
create a customer NSView object and give it a string and font property and some methods related to the actions below, and perhaps even a width property
essentially the idea is to use the Cocoa NSString category that lets you determine the length of string (and probably its height) from a string/font combo (I use this in UIKit, did use equivalents in Cocoa, but its been a while...)
one of your view's methods will be 'calculate'. When you get this, covert the string to an array of words using a single space as the separator (or make it more complex). Then, start computing the length of the drawn string, taking the first work, append a space and the second, etc, until you find you have exceeded he width. This is your first line string.
continue doing this for the number of lines that you want to draw (2? 3?). Calculate the length of the unicode char that does ... - its option semicolon as I recall - and keep that around.
in the last line, keep adding words until you exceed the length, and then back up a word at a time, verifying that the last appended strings string (minus a trailing space) but with the '...' char will fit in the space.
you can make this fancier by adding padding around the border etc.
once the calculation is finished (and you of course cache all the bits of the answer), your view is prepared when it gets 'drawRect:...'. You position at (0, bounds.size.height - 21) and draw the first segment, then move down 21 points and draw the second line, etc.
If I were to code this I would plan on 2-4 hours - its not trivial, perhaps the logic is a bit complex, but its straightforward. Good luck!
Although the correct answer was not accepted in this old question - scroll to the last answer - it includes the code Truncate the last line of multi-line NSTextField
The solution includes the use of ellipses and line wrapping combined.
I would like to make some bindings that toggle item titles in a popup menu based on a single numerical value in a text field. Let me explain:
This is my UI:
I want my menu items to automatically adjust to singular or plural based on the number in the text field. For example, when I type "1" in the box, I want the menu items to be labeled "minute", "hour" and "day". When I type "4", I want the menu items to be labeled "minutes", "hours" and "days".
What I did to date:
I bound the three menu item's labels to the same key path as the text field's value.
I created an NSValueTransformer subclass to interpret the value in the text field and return singular or plural to be used as item titles.
I applied this value transformer to the three bindings.
The issue:
My value transformer can either return singular or plural but it can't set the appropriate string based on the menu item it's applied to.
It looks to me like a value transformer is generic and can't return different values for different destinations. That would mean that to have the three titles change automatically, I would need to have three different value transformers that return the appropriate string for each menu item. That doesn't seem optimal at all.
Ideally I would be able to combine a string stored in the destination menu item (let's say in the item's tag property) with an "s" in the value transformer when the text field's value is larger than one, or something similar that would enable me to use a single value transformer for all the menu items.
Is there something I missed? What would be an ideal solution?
Okay, this is probably not an ideal solution, but something you could consider: if you set your value transformers from your code (and not in IB), you could instantiate 3 different transformers of the same class. You could give your value transformer an ivar NSString *unit (and add something like [[MyValueTransformer alloc] initWithUnit:]) to allow each to return their own string, but you still have to write the value transformer's code only once.
(Also, if you're ever going to consider making your application localizable, simply appending an "s" to create the plurals is not going to work. You could of course add ivars for both NSString *singular and NSString *plural to do that.)
Edit: Wait, I just realized you can register value transformers! If you register them as MyValueTransformerHours and MyValueTransformerMinutes (by manually allocating and initializing them in your code), you can use them from Interface Builder. See also https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ValueTransformers/Concepts/Registration.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20002166-BAJEAIEE.