Re: XCode/CamelBones question

[Alan Olsen]

On Aug 6, 2004, at 11:16 PM, Sherm Pendley wrote:
On Aug 6, 2004, at 7:01 PM, Alan Olsen wrote:
This is probably simple, I am just not seeing it.
It's simple in hindsight, but it can be difficult to get your head 
around it at first.
Especially when you are not used to Objective C and the methodology 
used in connecting everything together.


I have a couple of dialog boxes that are getting called in specific 
cases.  (A preferences panel and a couple of other panels needed to 
select data.)

I am not quite understanding how to call the various panels.  I know 
i need to connect something to something in the xcode interface, but 
I am not certain what.
It's not done in Xcode, but in Interface Builder. You create a new Nib 
with whatever panel(s) and such you want in it, and add that Nib to 
your project. (Okay, I lied - part of it is in Xcode.)
Sometimes hard to remember that interface builder is a separate app...
Moving things between nib files works with copy and paste.  I wish that 
drop and drag worked.  It is a bit more "intuitive".  (Though 
"intuitive" and "Cocoa programming" do not seem to be intersecting 
sets.)

In the MainMenu Nib, connect the "AppName Preferences" to an action 
method in AppName.pm. In that action method, create a new controller 
object. Here's an example from ShuX:

sub showPreferences {
    my ($self, $sender) = @_;
    unless (defined $self->{'_preferences'}) {
        $self->{'_preferences'} = new PreferencesDelegate;
    }
    $self->{'_preferences'}->{'Window'}->makeKeyAndOrderFront(undef);
}
In the constructor for the PreferencesDelegate class, create an 
NSWindowController and use it to load the Nib, telling it that the 
current object is the Nib's "owner". Thus, action messages you've 
connected to the "File's Owner" in IB will be sent to this object. 
Here's part of the PreferencesDelegate new() method from ShuX - I've 
deleted some code that isn't relevant:

sub new {
    # Typical Perl constructor
    # See 'perltoot' for details
    my $proto = shift;
    my $class = ref($proto) || $proto;
    my $self = {
    };
    bless ($self, $class);
    $self->{'wc'} = 
NSWindowController->alloc->initWithWindowNibName_owner("Preferences", 
$self);
    $self->{'wc'}->window;

    return $self;
}
Once you call NSWindowController's initWithWindowNibName_owner() 
method, the outlets that you've connected in IB will be connected to 
the corresponding outlets declared in your Perl code, and action 
methods sent by the Nib will be sent to the newly-created object.

You can also use the same technique to create multiple instances of 
the same Nib, each owned by a different controller object - ShuX does 
this to manage multiple browser windows.
I will try that.  I need to reorganize things before I can do that.  (I 
have everything crammed into the same nib.)


The only thing really left after this is getting NSTableView to work. 
 (I have example code for that. I will work o that once I have this 
solved.)
Have you looked at the "Data Access" example app?
No I had not.  That is very useful.