Re: Are views active or inactive?
Rick Mann wrote: On Dec 22, 2009, at 19:51:03, Kyle Sluder wrote: On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Rick Mann rm...@latencyzero.com wrote: I'm listening for that notification. Sure is a clunky way to do things. I've never used a view framework that didn't tell views when they became active/inactive. Views don't become (in)active, windows do. Since there are plenty of things that might be interested in that (Window menu, controllers, views∑), it's done as a notification so all interested parties can listen for it. I'm not against the notification, I just think NSView should have an active property. Views do become inactive (look at any well-designed control). Did you happen to have an 'a-ha' moment when you typed that sentence? Views don't generally have an active/inactive state. Controls, which are a special case of view, do. So have you considered making your custom view an NSControl instead of a simple NSView? That's the thing, you see. Inactive means the user can't interact with it. But the user can't interact with a view that's not a control anyway, so the state has no meaning.___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
Le 23 déc. 2009 à 12:06, Gregory Weston a écrit : Rick Mann wrote: On Dec 22, 2009, at 19:51:03, Kyle Sluder wrote: On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Rick Mann rm...@latencyzero.com wrote: I'm listening for that notification. Sure is a clunky way to do things. I've never used a view framework that didn't tell views when they became active/inactive. Views don't become (in)active, windows do. Since there are plenty of things that might be interested in that (Window menu, controllers, views∑), it's done as a notification so all interested parties can listen for it. I'm not against the notification, I just think NSView should have an active property. Views do become inactive (look at any well-designed control). Did you happen to have an 'a-ha' moment when you typed that sentence? Views don't generally have an active/inactive state. Controls, which are a special case of view, do. So have you considered making your custom view an NSControl instead of a simple NSView? That's the thing, you see. Inactive means the user can't interact with it. But the user can't interact with a view that's not a control anyway, so the state has no meaning. and 'active' is called 'enabled' in Cocoa. -- Jean-Daniel ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 23, 2009, at 03:15, Jean-Daniel Dupas wrote: Le 23 déc. 2009 à 12:06, Gregory Weston a écrit : Rick Mann wrote: I'm not against the notification, I just think NSView should have an active property. Views do become inactive (look at any well-designed control). Did you happen to have an 'a-ha' moment when you typed that sentence? Views don't generally have an active/inactive state. Controls, which are a special case of view, do. So have you considered making your custom view an NSControl instead of a simple NSView? That's the thing, you see. Inactive means the user can't interact with it. But the user can't interact with a view that's not a control anyway, so the state has no meaning. and 'active' is called 'enabled' in Cocoa. Except that it's more complicated than that, not entirely to Cocoa's glory. The first responder in an active window loses what you might call focus when the window becomes inactive. It *also* by default loses the ability to respond to first mouse clicks, except when it doesn't (if the default behavior is overridden). If the view is a control, it may have an enabled-but-inactive appearance (usually, the color is removed or dimmed, such as the selection turning gray, or a NSTableView source list changing from blue to gray) that's different from their disabled appearance (disabled controls don't have selections at all). The appearance may or may not be matched to the first-responder/first-mouse-click state, but that's not consistent behavior nor is it enforced by the frameworks. And, of course, a control may be disabled in an active window for other reasons. And, of course, custom non-control views may choose to represent themselves differently in an inactive window, following the model (well, one of the models) provided by controls, or not. There's no *formal* inactive state for views, although the state is often implemented informally, with greater or lesser consistency depending on the thoroughness of the developer and the state of advancement of the frameworks. (For example, IIRC the ability for a NSTableView to show a either visually inactive state or a disabled state is fairly recent.) So, the answer is still that windows become inactive, but views (formally) do not. What views do (informally) is decided on a case-by-case basis. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On 23/12/2009, at 10:15 PM, Jean-Daniel Dupas wrote: Did you happen to have an 'a-ha' moment when you typed that sentence? Views don't generally have an active/inactive state. Controls, which are a special case of view, do. So have you considered making your custom view an NSControl instead of a simple NSView? That's the thing, you see. Inactive means the user can't interact with it. But the user can't interact with a view that's not a control anyway, so the state has no meaning. and 'active' is called 'enabled' in Cocoa. Logically, enabled and active are two separate states - you can have a disabled control in an active window. But, controls typically draw the same way if either of these are false (i.e. the 'disabled' appearance). Views inherit the active state from their windows, so can ask their window for that state any time they need to know. --Graham ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
Le 23 déc. 2009 à 13:50, Graham Cox a écrit : On 23/12/2009, at 10:15 PM, Jean-Daniel Dupas wrote: Did you happen to have an 'a-ha' moment when you typed that sentence? Views don't generally have an active/inactive state. Controls, which are a special case of view, do. So have you considered making your custom view an NSControl instead of a simple NSView? That's the thing, you see. Inactive means the user can't interact with it. But the user can't interact with a view that's not a control anyway, so the state has no meaning. and 'active' is called 'enabled' in Cocoa. Logically, enabled and active are two separate states - you can have a disabled control in an active window. But, controls typically draw the same way if either of these are false (i.e. the 'disabled' appearance). Views inherit the active state from their windows, so can ask their window for that state any time they need to know. My bad, sorry for the misunderstanding. -- Jean-Daniel ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 23, 2009, at 03:06:58, Gregory Weston wrote: Did you happen to have an 'a-ha' moment when you typed that sentence? Views don't generally have an active/inactive state. Controls, which are a special case of view, do. So have you considered making your custom view an NSControl instead of a simple NSView? That's the thing, you see. Inactive means the user can't interact with it. But the user can't interact with a view that's not a control anyway, so the state has no meaning. On the contrary, users can interact with an inactive control. They can't interact with a disabled control. Consider a scroll bar. It can draw in an inactive state (not blue), but you can still interact with it by sending the window scroll events (something I'm unconvinced you should be able to do, but you can, and it proves convenient). In my case, it's a drawing canvas. However, the active drawing tool should not draw when the view is inactive (not frontmost). Since the tool is a singleton object in the app used by many views, it's important to be able to make the distinction. I suppose I could subclass NSControl, but this strikes me as inelegant (and I don't know that it has active/inactive state anyway). -- Rick ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 23, 2009, at 03:15:11, Jean-Daniel Dupas wrote: and 'active' is called 'enabled' in Cocoa. Again, active and enabled are orthogonal properties. -- Rick ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 23, 2009, at 11:21, Rick Mann wrote: On Dec 23, 2009, at 03:15:11, Jean-Daniel Dupas wrote: and 'active' is called 'enabled' in Cocoa. Again, active and enabled are orthogonal properties. Again, active isn't a *property* of views, or even of controls, for that matter. For *some* Cocoa controls and views, there is an inactive *state* (as you noted, which typically involves suppressing color) that's displayed when the containing window is inactive. Every other representation of an inactive state in a NSView is implemented application by application, view by view, not in the frameworks. In recent Mac OS releases, the HIGs having been moving towards demanding more consistent showing of inactive state in standard controls (and a few standard views). But IIRC your original question was whether there's a standard mechanism that would directly cause a view to redraw itself when its window changed its active state, and answer is still no -- there are only indirect mechanisms (the view must in some sense observe the state of its window). Incidentally, windows don't actually have an active state either. They have key and main states, whose representation is modified by the active state of the application. As I said earlier in this thread, these states are complex, subtle, and to a degree historically jumbled. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 23, 2009, at 2:20 PM, Rick Mann wrote: On Dec 23, 2009, at 03:06:58, Gregory Weston wrote: Did you happen to have an 'a-ha' moment when you typed that sentence? Views don't generally have an active/inactive state. Controls, which are a special case of view, do. So have you considered making your custom view an NSControl instead of a simple NSView? That's the thing, you see. Inactive means the user can't interact with it. But the user can't interact with a view that's not a control anyway, so the state has no meaning. On the contrary, users can interact with an inactive control. They can't interact with a disabled control. Consider a scroll bar. It can draw in an inactive state (not blue), but you can still interact with it by sending the window scroll events (something I'm unconvinced you should be able to do, but you can, and it proves convenient). I'd point out that you've kind of gone off your own point here. Quibbling about what it means to interact with a control aside, you're still talking about a *control* having an inactive state, not a (generic) view. In my case, it's a drawing canvas. However, the active drawing tool should not draw when the view is inactive (not frontmost). Since the tool is a singleton object in the app used by many views, it's important to be able to make the distinction. I suppose I could subclass NSControl, but this strikes me as inelegant (and I don't know that it has active/inactive state anyway). With this expanded explanation, I think the correct answer is that you're going about it the wrong way. It's not a normal Mac HI behavior for a drawing canvas to draw itself differently as a side-effect of its window being inactive. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 23, 2009, at 13:26:11, Gregory Weston wrote: With this expanded explanation, I think the correct answer is that you're going about it the wrong way. It's not a normal Mac HI behavior for a drawing canvas to draw itself differently as a side-effect of its window being inactive. I would disagree. I think it is, and should be formalized in the architecture. That I can check if my view's parent window is the main window just reinforces the need to behave differently when active vs. inactive. It's not elegant, which is why I think the notion should be formalized. -- Rick ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On 24/12/2009, at 8:26 AM, Gregory Weston wrote: With this expanded explanation, I think the correct answer is that you're going about it the wrong way. It's not a normal Mac HI behavior for a drawing canvas to draw itself differently as a side-effect of its window being inactive. Well, it depends. Drawing canvases may or may not support the idea of a selection, and so highlight selected objects in a certain way. That highlight might want to be sensitive to the active state of the window so that it can be drawn using the inactive control colour when inactive rather than a bright highlight, or turned off altogether. Bright highlighting in inactive windows is distracting and misleading. In DrawKit I do this, and the only way was to subscribe to the window's notifications for becoming/resigning main and refreshing the view. --Graham ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 23, 2009, at 14:53:43, Graham Cox wrote: On 24/12/2009, at 8:26 AM, Gregory Weston wrote: With this expanded explanation, I think the correct answer is that you're going about it the wrong way. It's not a normal Mac HI behavior for a drawing canvas to draw itself differently as a side-effect of its window being inactive. Well, it depends. Drawing canvases may or may not support the idea of a selection, and so highlight selected objects in a certain way. That highlight might want to be sensitive to the active state of the window so that it can be drawn using the inactive control colour when inactive rather than a bright highlight, or turned off altogether. Bright highlighting in inactive windows is distracting and misleading. In DrawKit I do this, and the only way was to subscribe to the window's notifications for becoming/resigning main and refreshing the view. Thanks for confirming this is the way you do it. Helps reassure me it's a workable solution. Thanks again!___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Are views active or inactive?
Hi. I realize this is a basic Cocoa question, but now that I need to know, I can't find the answer in the NSView or NSResponder docs. Do NSViews have the notion of being active or inactive? My app architecture requires that I be able to differentiate, at draw time, between a (custom) view that is in the frontmost window (and technically, has focus), and a similar custom view that is in a non-frontmost window. In my case, I have Tool objects (think of a line tool or rectangle tool in a drawing program). These are singleton objects in the app, and hence a line tool is shared among all document views. If the frontmost view is in the middle of a tool operation, and one of the inactive views updates its view, it shows the current tool drawing state (Tool objects get a chance to draw). I'd like for my custom view to not give the Tool an opportunity to draw when it is not focussed/frontmost. Thanks! -- Rick ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Rick Mann rm...@latencyzero.com wrote: Do NSViews have the notion of being active or inactive? My app architecture requires that I be able to differentiate, at draw time, between a (custom) view that is in the frontmost window (and technically, has focus), and a similar custom view that is in a non-frontmost window. Listen for NSWindowDidBecomeMainNotification. -viewDidMoveToWindow is a good time to start, and -viewWillMoveToWindow: is a good time to stop. --Kyle Sluder ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 22, 2009, at 19:41:06, Kyle Sluder wrote: On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Rick Mann rm...@latencyzero.com wrote: Do NSViews have the notion of being active or inactive? My app architecture requires that I be able to differentiate, at draw time, between a (custom) view that is in the frontmost window (and technically, has focus), and a similar custom view that is in a non-frontmost window. Listen for NSWindowDidBecomeMainNotification. -viewDidMoveToWindow is a good time to start, and -viewWillMoveToWindow: is a good time to stop. I'm listening for that notification. Sure is a clunky way to do things. I've never used a view framework that didn't tell views when they became active/inactive. I'm not sure viewDidMoveToWindow works here. I'm using it already for something else, and it gets called 3 times when my window is created, but never when activated. -- Rick ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 22, 2009, at 10:45 PM, Rick Mann wrote: I'm listening for that notification. Sure is a clunky way to do things. I've never used a view framework that didn't tell views when they became active/inactive. AppKit views don’t have a native active/inactive status like carbon HIToolbox controls. For views which alter their appearance based on whether or not they are first responder, or in a key/main window, you must track this state yourself. I'm not sure viewDidMoveToWindow works here. I'm using it already for something else, and it gets called 3 times when my window is created, but never when activated. You can use viewWill/DidMoveToWindow to stop observing notifications on your preview window (if any) and start observing notifications on your new container window (if any), not for the tracking of the “active” state itself. - Jim ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Rick Mann rm...@latencyzero.com wrote: I'm listening for that notification. Sure is a clunky way to do things. I've never used a view framework that didn't tell views when they became active/inactive. Views don't become (in)active, windows do. Since there are plenty of things that might be interested in that (Window menu, controllers, views…), it's done as a notification so all interested parties can listen for it. I'm not sure viewDidMoveToWindow works here. I'm using it already for something else, and it gets called 3 times when my window is created, but never when activated. This surprises you? It's called -viewDidMoveToWindow after all. You would start listening for all window change notifications there, and then your view's notification handler would check to see if its window is the one being notified about and update its drawing accordingly. --Kyle Sluder ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 22, 2009, at 19:48:53, Jim Correia wrote: On Dec 22, 2009, at 10:45 PM, Rick Mann wrote: I'm listening for that notification. Sure is a clunky way to do things. I've never used a view framework that didn't tell views when they became active/inactive. AppKit views don’t have a native active/inactive status like carbon HIToolbox controls. For views which alter their appearance based on whether or not they are first responder, or in a key/main window, you must track this state yourself. Dumb. I'm not sure viewDidMoveToWindow works here. I'm using it already for something else, and it gets called 3 times when my window is created, but never when activated. You can use viewWill/DidMoveToWindow to stop observing notifications on your preview window (if any) and start observing notifications on your new container window (if any), not for the tracking of the “active” state itself. Problem still remains that it gets called 3 times. I just found out I was creating 3 tracking areas. Not sure if the willMoveToWindow is called in between. -- Rick ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On Dec 22, 2009, at 19:51:03, Kyle Sluder wrote: On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Rick Mann rm...@latencyzero.com wrote: I'm listening for that notification. Sure is a clunky way to do things. I've never used a view framework that didn't tell views when they became active/inactive. Views don't become (in)active, windows do. Since there are plenty of things that might be interested in that (Window menu, controllers, views…), it's done as a notification so all interested parties can listen for it. I'm not against the notification, I just think NSView should have an active property. Views do become inactive (look at any well-designed control). ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Are views active or inactive?
On 22 dec 2009, at 19.45, Rick Mann wrote: Do NSViews have the notion of being active or inactive? My app architecture requires that I be able to differentiate, at draw time, between a (custom) view that is in the frontmost window (and technically, has focus), and a similar custom view that is in a non-frontmost window. Listen for NSWindowDidBecomeMainNotification. -viewDidMoveToWindow is a good time to start, and -viewWillMoveToWindow: is a good time to stop. I'm listening for that notification. Sure is a clunky way to do things. I've never used a view framework that didn't tell views when they became active/inactive. Lot's of interesting advice in this thread... :-) You don't have to listen to any notifications to achieve this. You will be asked to draw when the state of the window changes, and when you become or resign first responder status. So, you don't have to figure out *when* to draw, but you do have to figure out *how* to draw. Here are two things that you're often interested in taking into account: * Is your window the key window ([NSApp keyWindow] == [self window]) * Are you the first responder of that window ([[self window] firstResponder] == self) You can of course also track the state of these properties at all times using notifications and overrides of methods from your superclasses, but there is - like I said earlier - in general no need to. j o a r ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
