Where should document-related actions for a Cocoa app be implemented?

Question

I'm writing a document-based Cocoa app that's basically a graphical editing program. I want the user to be able to show/hide non-modal windows (such as an inspector window). Since these windows would be shown/hidden from menu items, where is the "best" place to implement the actions, such as - (IBAction)toggleInspector:(id)sender?

I've seen that in the Sketch example code these are implemented in the app delegate, and the window controller instances are kept there as well, but that feels like more of a convenient place to put it than the most "graceful" place. Additionally, since this inspector would only be relevant when a document is open it feels like it should be associated more with the document's main NSWindowController than the app.

Answer 1

Additionally, since this inspector would only be relevant when a document is open it feels like it should be associated more with the document's main NSWindowController than the app.

No, because the Inspector is shared amongst all documents; there isn't one Inspector per document.

Remember that a single process can have multiple documents open; these are not multiple processes, one per document, as on Windows, but multiple documents within a single process. There is one Inspector per process, shared amongst all of the documents, and it applies to whichever of those documents is frontmost at the time.

I would give the Inspector its own controller, instantiated in the MainMenu nib.