Drawing an "NSView" to a Custom-View - How? Am I taking the right approach?

Question

I'm using Objective-C and Cocoa, whilst developing for Mac OS X - so not the iPhone/Cocoa Touch. (That said, I'd be interested if it was the same procedure for the iPhone)

I'm working on a preferences window for a simple app. I have a NSWindow with a toolbar - there are 5 different items on the toolbar, all of which need to bring up a different set of options.

So I set the NSToolbar and its items in Interface Builder, and then placed a custom view underneath the menu - taking up the rest of the window. My plan is to work out the interface too each of the NSToolbarItems options, and then draw the corresponding view on to the custom view when the specified NSToolbarItem is clicked.

I'm guessing that I simply create a NSView sub-class for each view, an empty xib in Interface Builder - set the xib to my custom NSView, code it as usual... But here's a few problems;

1 - Just how can I get the xib file to appear on the custom-view then? I have looked around and most articles don't seem to have this situation, or a situation I can relate too.

2 - When the window comes up, I want the default view to appear on the custom view. Once again, I'm guessing I just write that in the initialisation code for the NSWindow - its no big deal. It just goes back to question 1 though - how do I draw my NSView to the custom-view specified in Interface Builder?

I'd be really grateful for any help! Cheers in advance.

Answer 1

So I set the NSToolbar and its items in Interface Builder, and then placed a custom view underneath the menu - taking up the rest of the window.

You can't have a menu inside of a window. You can have a pop-up button, which has a menu, but not a menu directly. Did you mean “toolbar” here?

You don't need to create a custom view for this. Make a tab view and set it to be tabless. Give it as many tab view items as you have toolbar items. In your controller, write an action method for each of the toolbar items, and in each action method, switch the active tab of the tab view.

You can activate different tabs in IB to populate them with views in IB. The active tab is saved in the nib, so make sure you set it back to the first tab before saving, so that the first tab is the one that's initially active when your app runs.

Just how can I get the xib file to appear on the custom-view then?

That question doesn't make sense.

Once again, I'm guessing I just write that in the initialisation code for the NSWindow - its no big deal.

You would only be able to do that if you have your own initialization code for the window, which you would only have if you have subclassed NSWindow. There are very few reasons to do that; unless you're making the window itself look different (not making an Aqua or HUD window), you should move that initialization code elsewhere, probably to the aforementioned controller (which should be the File's Owner of the nib).

It just goes back to question 1 though - how do I draw my NSView to the custom-view specified in Interface Builder?

A custom view in Interface Builder is a plain NSView (unless you explicitly change it to a subclass of NSView you create). However, you do not need one for anything you have described in your question.