28 février 2009

Changing the selected text’s color for an NSTextField

Yeah, I’m getting intimate with Cocoa development, so you can expect occasional posts like this one. My readers are not supposed to care about this; I’m just posting it because I’ve been googling that question for an hour and didn’t find a proper answer anywhere.

There’s a point in the Cocoa documentation (I would link to it, but it looks like URLs tend to change every so often) that says:

A text field allows you to set the attributes of its text, the text background color, whether it draws the background, and whether it draws a bezel or border around its text. Note that the text and background colors of selected text are configurable. The selected text color overrides any actual text color applied to the text while it’s selected (this is generally the case with controls).

But nowhere does it say how. NSTextView has a setSelectedTextAttributes, but NSTextField doesn’t; so how do you change the selected text’s attributes?

Maybe you’re supposed to know that from the start (I’m learning Cocoa in random order, by googling for bits of information as I need them, and I know that’s not how you’re supposed to do it but, hey, my app works, and it doesn’t even seem to leak), but NSTextView isn’t just a control you can drop in Interface Builder to let users enter long, formatted text; there’s also an NSTextView associated with each window, and it processes the text behind the scenes or something.

So all you have to do is get access to that NSTextView, and setSelectedTextAttributes on it. Here’s how you get text fields of the window InputWindow to show selected text on a black background:


NSTextView *textEditor = (NSTextView *)[InputWindow fieldEditor:YES forObject:InputTextField];
[textEditor setSelectedTextAttributes:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:[NSColor blackColor], NSBackgroundColorAttributeName, nil]];

The (NSTextView*) bit is because fieldEditor:forObject: thinks it returns an NSText*, even though it seems like it does return an NSTextView* — otherwise the code just wouldn’t work, would it? Looks like a known bug in the Cocoa headers.

Caught You! — Make Your iPhone Rat Out Thieves • “Caught You! masquerades as a standard iPhone app called Bank Details. […] The Bank Details app invites Mr. Thief to enter a pin number. The thing is, there is no pin number, and so while Mr. Thief is excitedly trying various combinations, the app is covertly mailing its location back to you.” I’m not gonna pay for that, but it’s clever enough. Don’t tell your thieving friends about it, though.

	Amazon sorta capitulates, will let publishers decide text-to-speech availability • Oh, come on. You’d think Amazon is big enough now not to let the bullies win.

01:52	Resist, resist, resist the temptation to make my own RSS reader for the Mac.

27 février 2009

21:36	Au fait, c'est la téléphonie par Freebox qui est à chier, ou la liaison transméditerranéenne ?

How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data • “Our datastore stores schema-less bags of properties (e.g., JSON objects or Python dictionaries). The only required property of stored entities is id, a 16-byte UUID. […] We index data in these entities by storing indexes in separate MySQL tables.” Interesting. It fascinates and frightens me that all those social, intrinsically relational web 2.0 services can never use JOINs because of scalability issues.

04:24	Yeah, I wrote this email to brag that I had rewritten Quicksilver from scratch in my first week of Obj-C. What of it?

	Ning Launches Rich, Persistent Chat Feature • “Tonight Ning will introduce new chat functionality, giving Ning network administrators the oft-requested ability to integrate a rich chat environment similar to the one launched on Facebook last April.” Wow, they’re still really alive?

	Memory Management Programming Guide for Cocoa: Object Ownership and Disposal • I’m re-reading this now that I’ve managed to make an app that doesn’t crash (and doesn’t leak memory very noticeably), and… yeah, it’s fucked up. So fucked up it still gives me nervous giggles.

	O’Reilly Webcast: Developing Applications for Palm webOS • Call me back when it’s not a fucking 56-minute filmed PowerPoint presentation (recorded with a can and some string). Godmotherfuckindamn youtubization of the internet.

	doubleTwist • I didn’t really look into it when it was announced, because I don’t care so much about the sharing aspect, but now that I’ve tried it I have to admit it might be a rather interesting competitor to iTunes for managing your media; I just might use it to browse my movies and TV shows — I definitely didn’t expect an application that would run so smoothly.

26 février 2009

	MacBook Air hinge defect not covered by Apple’s warranty? • “Our own MacBook Air Rev. A had the exact same problem – the hinge becomes loose over time, then suddenly catches and cracks from normal use, it’s not from undue stress.” Yay for screwing early adopters.

	Changes Coming to Windows 7 Release Candidate that Weren’t in the Beta • Aero Peek in Alt-Tab was a long time coming, but Win+number to launch or switch to your ten most used applications is useful. (I’m still annoyed that the Mac doesn’t have a Windows key equivalent — i.e., reserved for systemwide shortcuts.)

21:07	Apple's product naming conventions are fun, but how do I find how to fix a problem with how SPACES handles my application windows?

14:46	Now that I have it in Safari, I'm not sure I like full-page zoom after all.

25 février 2009

	Gmail Puts Unread Message Counts First in Tabs, Title Bars • There’s absolutely no excuse for this being buried in the Labs settings just because the guy who coded it doesn’t have check-in privileges.

	‘Zen Bound’ Finally Arrives in App Store • $5 is a bit more than I like to pay for iPhone games I’ll only be playing for a day, but this is so gorgeous I don’t think I can pass. (Must drain your battery in two seconds, though.)

17:22

Safari 4 public beta: problems and fixes

Some users have experienced an issue wherein Mail stop receiving new mail. The program will load and quit normally, but will hang in the activity window and prevent mail from being downloaded. The apparent fix for this issue is to delete Mail’s preference files and relaunch the application.

And have to reconfigure all my accounts? Like hell! The day I have to reconfigure my Mail preferences from scratch is the day I switch to Thunderbird.

If Mail hangs in the activity window, removing plug-ins may not be enough (unless you remove all of them, which I didn’t try); simply disable plug-ins with this Terminal line:


defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles -bool NO

Mail bundles are supposed to be disabled by default anyway, and I’m beginning to think I’ll just leave that alone and not enable them again — unless some other utility’s installer does it for me without asking (there are two ProxiMail bundles on my system, so I figure Proxi will automatically enable bundles on install).

Also, note to self: boycott GrowlMail. The fucking thing is supposed to have an uninstaller but doesn’t, and somehow it places itself in /System/Library/Mail/Bundles instead of the still annoying, but acceptable, /Library/Mail/Bundles, or the right place which would be in the user’s home directory.

	Mac4Ever : SFR répond à nos questions sur son offre iPhone • J’avais lu les tarifs d’un oeil, pas remarqué le wifi illimité et, surtout, les SMS illimités. Hrmf. (Mais pas au point d’avoir des regrets.)

OmniWeb, OmniDazzle, OmniDiskSweeper, and OmniObjectMeter now freeware • “Instead of continuing to charge for these four applications, which aren’t getting updated as frequently as our other titles, we felt it would better serve the community to make them available at no cost.” Selling OmniWeb was untenable; I’m a little surprised about OmniDazzle; apparently there’s more money to be made with GTD and project management tools, is there.

	iPhone sur SFR le 8 avril • je n’ai pas de regret, moi ça fait un an que j’ai un iPhone. Et évidemment que les tarifs sont alignés sur ceux d’Orange, vous espériez quoi ?

	Kindle 2 dissected, found to contain space for a SIM card — i.e., it is coming to Europe… someday.

02:04	On thirty-fourth thought, when I'm able to buy a new Intel Mac I'll be rich enough not to be sorry I bought a 75€ RAM upgrade for my G5.

00:52	I really don't enjoy that Google recently started processing dashes like spaces.

24 février 2009

18:22

What’s new in Safari 4

I haven’t installed it, because I can’t live without 1Password, but it looks very pretty. It finally has Cover Flow on your history and bookmarks; the 3D take on the classical start page mosaic is cute; Apple didn’t waste time copying Chrome’s tabs-on-top system, going as far as removing the title bar altogether (which looks great but makes me wonder how you actually grab and move the window); and they’re getting surprisingly aggressive on the Windows side with a native UI.

I just can’t wait for 1Password to be updated.

P.S. Cocoia Blog:

In the new beta, you can actually move the window by clicking and holding the tabs (which takes some serious getting used to) and move tabs, as well as tear them, by touching the little ‘textured’ zone at the right side of each tab.

Which I take to mean that dragging a tab moves the whole window unless you clicked on the tiny hotspot at the right of the tab. I guess that works.

	Snow Leopard screenshots show interface tweaks. I need to remember Snow Leopard is coming out, drop the idea of finally upgrading my G5’s RAM and save to finally buy a decent Intel Mac.

	Steve Jobs reportedly cutting back on instant messaging; Steve Jobs Skips Apple’s Annual Meeting for First Time. Yup…

22 février 2009

18:27	Come on, Interface Builder has to be the most inscrutable piece of software Apple ever released. How are all OS X devs so happy?

21 février 2009

	How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook. Sooo tempting.

20 février 2009

	Facebook Connect Comments Box. Where do you find a website that needs to rely on an external comments widget nowadays?

	Possible image of the new Mac mini leaked. DisplayPort, FW800, a buttload of USB ports and no external redesign, I guess that’s too boring to be fake. (Although just because it might physically exist doesn’t necessarily mean it would be be released.)

19 février 2009

21:01	"You can now email photos directly from CameraBag!" Cool.

	Palm Pre’s Touchstone charger requires matte, soft-touch battery cover. I was afraid the required “accessory” to work with the induction charger would be an ugly protuberance; in fact, it’s a nice replacement back cover. That’s a relief, even though I still think it should be standard.

	Virb reboot. The TechCrunch writeup says they’re going more FriendFeed to find themselves a niche, but the site doesn’t look that different from the previous version. A bit prettier, more streamlined, and still not bringing anything that would make it exist against Facebook et al.

18 février 2009

	PowerShot SX200 IS. Twelve megapixels, 28-336mm zoom with optical stabilization, 720p video and HDMI for $350 list. Damn.

	Vodafone SIM card in a Palm Pre. That’s unexpected so soon. (The Pre is supposed to be Sprint-exclusive for a while, and Sprint isn’t GSM and doesn’t use SIM cards.)

17 février 2009

14:32

Tree (OS X)

This is a very well-done hierarchical notes organizer: you can switch between outline view and tree view, but the latter is not the messy free-form organizational charts I expected — just a column view where each item can be detailed or collapsed (think of the Finder’s column view).

35 € is rather steep for an application that can only handle plain text, but I really like the way it’s done. The funny thing is, I already had plans for a tandem of iPhone and Mac applications that would work a bit like that.

via mac4ever.com

	Chromium Build For OS X [via]: presumably, the guy who bothered to compile and distribute it didn’t add a trojan. I didn’t bother, but if you’re bored…

	TinyChat [via]: instant disposable chatroom (or you can create your own room just like any IRC channel). Very simple — no credentials, no operators — and well done. Except for the inherent evil of offering to “log you in through Twitter” (and then automatically tweeting your room ID).