I'm wanting to add a Quartz Composer "patch editor" style interface element to my Cocoa/Objective C(++) application. For those unfamiliar with QC, the patch editor is a visual representation of the patch graph: effectively showing each node and it's properties, and providing a mouse driven select/click/drag interface. It looks like...
Quartz Composer Example http://files.me.com/archgrove/ya1xhh
I'll be using it to render a specific type of multi-rooted tree, where each node has some associated text and an arc joining it to its children. Users will be clicking on the tree nodes to select them, as well as dragging them around.
At the moment, I'm using a custom NSView inside a scroll view that Quartz draws each node, the arcs etc at each render, and processes mouse and keyboard input by hand (including hit testing, movement and so forth). This seems brutally wheel reinventive, and doesn't interact all that well with Core Animation. I'm hoping someone has some general alternative advice. I'm pondering along the lines of...
An existing control/3rd party library I've overlooked
Make each node in the tree an NSView, and use the normal view structure to handle the input, whilst drawing the graphics in the same way. But then, the inter-node arc rendering doesn't seem to fit naturally into the design
Something using a single NSView still, but making each tree node and arc an individual layer
Something else
Thanks kindly,
adamw
You might want to give EFLaceView a look: FlowChartView on CocoaDev
Edit: download link on page above is dead. There is a version of EFLaceView on github.
Related
I'm writing my first Cocoa app and I would like to make a "trackball / eyeball / arcball / whatever it's called" button to rotate a 3D OpenGL scene.
There's a perfect example of this custom Cocoa control in Pages (Apple iWork suite) when you select a 3D chart. After some hacks, this control seems to be referenced as SFC3DRotateWidget. Here's a screenshot of the control in Pages.
Maybe this widget is reusable, but I didn't find how or where. So I try to recreate it.
I'm inexperienced with Cocoa so I'm not sure how to do that nor exactly where (i.e. what to do with Interface Builder, what to do with code...).
I'm not sure if I need to override the drawing function. I thought to use a textured button (Interface Builder) with a NSTrackingArea (code) to handle mouse events (move, drag, ...) but the area is necessarily rectangular. The interactive zones of the custom control used by Apple seem to follow the shape of the arrows. I've read on S.O. I can use NSBezierPath to create a more specific area (only via code?).
Does it sound good for you?
Do I miss something?
Let met know if you have any tips, tricks or resources you can share!
Thanks!
It sounds like you want to build a custom control. You do this by subclassing NSControl, which there is a guide on how to do. You can control the circular clickable area, and the responses to the mouse events by implementing the various methods. For example you can track mouse events with mouseDown: and the related methods.
You probably do not need to use any custom drawing code, NSImageView subviews with the various arrows will probably suite your purposes fine, unless you'd rather draw them in code.
I have a question regarding NSMenuItems.
What I'm trying to do is replicate a java GUI using native OS X components, therefore the language I am using is Cocoa. What I am trying to do is to get every menu item to have an image and then, beside it, some text.
I have already done some research into it and my first port of call (as always it seems lol) was the apple docs which had this handy example which illustrates how to embed views inside menuitems:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/MenuItemView/Listings/MyWindowController_m.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS10004136-MyWindowController_m-DontLinkElementID_8
Being relatively new to cocoa, I was thinking I would have to override one of the drawing methods from NSMenuItem. Not really sure though.
Another idea that I was toying with was creating a custom view that held a image and some text.
Any other ideas/validation or discussion would be most appreciated.
Thanks all!
Oh and the GUI creation is being done by hand no interface builder.
Okay, so I now have menu items with icons beside them. For anyone who is interested here it is ( i've not done a leak analysis on it or anything).
First things first, put all of the images you want into the "Resources" folder (thats what its called in xcode 3.1.4).
Now, for example, after we have all the images, we want to use images called "eraser.png" and "eraser_on.png" and I want to attach these to the 3rd menu item. In order to achieve this we do the following :
The code below will get the menu item at position 3 in the menu
NSMenuItem *item = [ nameOfPopUpButton itemAtIndex:2];
The code below will set the image for the menu item to be "eraser.png"
[ item setImage: [ NSImage imageNamed:#"eraser"] ];
That's you set the image for the menu item (which will be on the left hand side of the text aka before the text).
If you want different images for the different states, eg when the user presses it, use this method (not tested myself but its sounds sensible :D and the function is straight out the api)
[item setOnStateImage: [ NSImage imageNamed:#"eraser_on" ] ]
You can however leave it nil or not set it at all and it will go the default color
Hope this helps someone.
Pieced this together from: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/MenuMadness/Listings/Controller_m.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40008870-Controller_m-DontLinkElementID_4
Thanks :)
If you need to do this you have the right idea in creating a view with image and label subviews.
BUT: don't do this. Creating a "native" application is not primarily about your choice of language (which is Objective-C, btw, not Cocoa; the latter is a collection of development frameworks implemented in Objective-C). It's about conforming to the platform.
On OS X (and iOS), more than probably any other platform, consistency in UI design is paramount. Users know when an application looks strange, and having icons next to each menu item (something I certainly have seen in Java apps) is definitely strange and unnatural on OS X. Users will be irritated at best, confused at worst.
So my advice is to either follow the Human Interface Guidelines (and save yourself a lot of work as a nice side effect) or just stick with your existing Java application.
If you want to provide quick iconic access to common functions, the recommended approach on OS X is to use a toolbar.
So I want to have a view (NSView, NSOpenGLView, something CG related?) which basically displays a map. Such as:
http://dump.tanaris4.com/map.png
Obviously that looks horrible, but I did it using an NSView, and it draws SO slow. Clearly not designed for this.
I just need to allow users to click on the individual (x,y) coordinates to make changes, and zoom into a certain area (to see it better).
Should I go the OpenGL route? And if so - any suggestions as to how to get started? (I was able to follow the guide to draw a triangle, so that's good).
I did find this post on zooming in an NSView: How to implement zoom/scale in a Cocoa AppKit-application
My concern is if I'm drawing over 6000 coordinates and the lines connecting them, this isn't efficient at all.
I don't think using OpenGL would be of any good here. The problem does not seem to be the actual painting, but rather the rendering strategy. You would need a scene graph of some kind to dynamically handle level of detail and culling.
Qt has all this packaged in a nice class class QGraphicsScene (see http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/qgraphicsscene.html for reference, and http://doc.qt.nokia.com/main-snapshot/demos-chip.html for an example).
Some basic concepts you should consider using:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scene_graph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadtree
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail
Try using core graphics for this, really there is so much that could be done. Watch the video Practical Drawing for iOS Developers from WWDC 2011 and it should give an over view of what can be done with CG.
I believe even CoreGraphics will suffice for what you want to achieve, and that should work under a UIView if you draw the rectangle of your view completely under the DrawRect method of your UIView (you must overload this method). Please see the UIView Class Reference. I have a mobile application that logs points on the UIMapKit, kind of like Nike+, and it certainly works well for massive amounts of points/line segments. There is no reason why this simple approach cannot work for you as well.
I've been trying to get this right for weeks now, and though I've learned a lot through my misfires, at this point, I just need a solution. The issue is with unpacking the seemingly overlapping graphics and UI APIs included in Cocoa, many of which produce similar effects, but feature unique limitations that I've often discovered only after investing many hours into an implementation.
I'm new to Cocoa, but not to programming, and I'm trying to create a Mac app with a very customized UI – think Capo, Garageband, or Billings. One view in my window will display an ordered list of subviews, each of which does a lot of custom drawing, and each must support a "selected" state and drag-reordering. The subviews do not need to support being dragged outside of their superview.
Ideally, a drag will give animated feedback as it happens, pushing neighboring sibling views to make space, e.g. toolbar icons or the Safari bookmarks bar. The trouble is, I can't seem to land on the right pack of technologies to get this right. I've done the subviews as NSView subclasses in an NSCollectionView and also as CALayers in a custom CollectionView-like NSView, and neither seems to offer the perfect solution. That said, the first option seems the better of the two for its superior handling of mouse events.
I've not yet tried doing this as a TableView, and I don't want to go down that path without some indication I'm on the right track. Extensive Googling has shown only that there aren't any up-to-date resources on CoreAnimation-enabled reordering or dragging. As such a standard feature of the OS X UI, I feel like this should be easier!
Any help from anyone on what the right tools are for this job would be greatly appreciated. TIA.
In Interface Builder.app (and some other cocoa apps), image dragging has a very nice/sexy effect of morphing the drag image while you drag a draggable item out of its window.
For example in Interface Buildler.app:
Show the Library Palette (⇧⌘L, or Tools Menu -> Library)
Drag an item out of the Library palette
NOTE: as you drag the item out of the Library Palette window, it morphs from an image of the original list item to an image of the icon of the dragged item.
I have fully implemented drag and drop in my Application using the normal Cocoa NSDragSource/NSDragDestination facilities.
However, I can't find a hook for doing this image morph while dragging. I'm returning the initial drag image by overriding
-[NSView dragImage:at:offset:event:pasteboard:source:slideBack:]
But this is only called at the beginning of the drag.
How do you signal that you would like to replace the current drag image (ideally using the sexy morph effect).
You guys beat me to it. :-)
Yes, JLNDragEffectManager is open source (with attribution in your apps, please) and available on my blog. It should work fine as-is with no modification back to 10.5, but I'm not sure back any further. Others linked to it (and it's easily googleable), so to avoid self-congratulatory blog linking, I'll leave it at that.
Issues: One developer commented on (and submitted code to fix) the lack of dragging offset support. I've just not gotten around to posting the update. That's the only outstanding issue I'm aware of.
Improvements: I'd like to add multiple "zones" (say, one per document, so dragging from doc to doc keeps table rows looking like table rows, but anywhere outside doc windows turns them into a file icon a la HFS Promise Drag). Some day ...
Design: The post itself details the reasoning behind the design and the relatively simple morphing effect (cross-fade plus size are animated using basic NSAnimation, etc.). The code (the class as well as the demo app) is thoroughly blocked out and commented.
Won't link to my own post but would love the karma of upvotes for my effort. ;-)
UPDATE: Similar (but better-integrated) functionality is available as of 10.7. If you are targeting 10.7 or higher, it's best to use the new API. JLNDragEffectManager works fine on 10.7, so it can be used for earlier-targeted versions.
JNLDragEffectManager does exactly that. :)
The API does not support this well. Joshua Nozzi gives a method that looks reasonable in this weblog post.
IB's effect isn't that fancy. It's a crossfade and scale. Hold down shift to see it more clearly.
As of 10.7+ the current approach is to use the
enumerateDraggingItemsWithOptions:
forView:
classes:
searchOptions:
usingBlock:
API on NSDraggingInfo. The documentation is really poor but the ADC samples like MultiPhotoFrame or TableViewPlayground can give a good idea on how to use the new mechanism.