Re: Was: Re: NSStepper - useless?
On Feb 23, 2012, at 2:13 PM, Seth Willits wrote: On Feb 23, 2012, at 6:16 AM, William Squires wrote: From what I've read, the NSStepper has a bug (though practically, you'll never see it); if one were to click the up or down arrow on the control 2^32 times (assuming it's value is a 4-byte signed int,and is initialized to 0), it would wrap around (or raise an exception for integer overflow). Probably not what the user had in mind! It's pretty irrelevant, because you wouldn't be using a stepper control for values in the billions. That'd be a poor UI. Just like if a table view had a couple billion rows in it in (in 32-bit) it would have broken as well. But it's a terrible thing to do in the first place. ;) Why didn't they just make the NSStepper a custom view that draws two arrows, and has two sent actions that you can connect? Or even a variation of NSMatrix with two button cells that look like arrows. That would avoid the problem entirely, and be more intuitive to use. Not really. The control's intended use is to increment and decrement a value. That's what it does. If you're not using the stepper for manipulating a numeric value, you should probably be using a different control. I'm just saying the stepper itself should not have a value, it should send actions to a controller so it can manipulate a numeric value in a model object, or it should be able (using bindings) to increment/decrement a model's value. Using the UI as a model isn't what MVC is all about. -- Seth Willits ___ 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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/wsquires%40satx.rr.com This email sent to wsqui...@satx.rr.com ___ 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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Was: Re: NSStepper - useless?
On 27/02/2012, at 11:44 AM, William Squires wrote: I'm just saying the stepper itself should not have a value, it should send actions to a controller so it can manipulate a numeric value in a model object, or it should be able (using bindings) to increment/decrement a model's value. Using the UI as a model isn't what MVC is all about. OK, so by that argument, no controls should have a value. Sliders should not have a value. How then is that control going to draw itself? The position of the slider is determined by its value relative to its min and max. If that value can't be determined then the control will appear incorrectly, and controls have no way to ask the data model for a value - it's up to the relevant controller to push the value to the control. Since all controls work that way, why should NSStepper be an exception? In general I would agree that caching a value in more than one place is not usually a good idea because of all the synchronisation issues that implies, but for controls it's justified. In any case, correct use of controls, whether through target/action or through bindings, takes care of the synch. issue. If you are having trouble with that, you probably haven't got it set up correctly. I use text field/stepper/slider combinations all over the place and have never had to concern myself with synch. issues, even though all three in a triple store the same value - get it right and really, it Just Works. You might as well get used to it, that's how it is. --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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Was: Re: NSStepper - useless?
On Feb 26, 2012, at 4:44 PM, William Squires wrote: Why didn't they just make the NSStepper a custom view that draws two arrows, and has two sent actions that you can connect? Or even a variation of NSMatrix with two button cells that look like arrows. That would avoid the problem entirely, and be more intuitive to use. Not really. The control's intended use is to increment and decrement a value. That's what it does. If you're not using the stepper for manipulating a numeric value, you should probably be using a different control. I'm just saying the stepper itself should not have a value, it should send actions to a controller so it can manipulate a numeric value in a model object, or it should be able (using bindings) to increment/decrement a model's value. Using the UI as a model isn't what MVC is all about. The stepper having a value doesn't break MVC any more than a text field having a string value, or a slider having a numeric value, does. And bindings require that the stepper have a value to begin with. All basic controls are architected the same way — they all maintain a value which they display and manipulate. When that value changes, they send an action. A stepper doesn't display it's value, but there's little or no benefit to architecting it totally differently. That would just be pushing more responsibility onto the controller which isn't necessary when the stepper can do it correctly for everyone to begin with. Whatever scenario you've cooked up where you need to know whether the value is being incremented or decremented (which you can still easily do) is not the norm. -- Seth Willits ___ 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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Was: Re: NSStepper - useless?
I'm just saying the stepper itself should not have a value, it should send actions to a controller so it can manipulate a numeric value in a model object, or it should be able (using bindings) to increment/decrement a model's value. Using the UI as a model isn't what MVC is all about. OK, so by that argument, no controls should have a value. Sliders should not have a value. How then is that control going to draw itself? The position of the slider is determined by its value relative to its min and max. If that value can't be determined then the control will appear incorrectly, and controls have no way to ask the data model for a value - it's up to the relevant controller to push the value to the control. Since all controls work that way, why should NSStepper be an exception? In general I would agree that caching a value in more than one place is not usually a good idea because of all the synchronisation issues that implies, but for controls it's justified. In any case, correct use of controls, whether through target/action or through bindings, takes care of the synch. issue. If you are having trouble with that, you probably haven't got it set up correctly. I use text field/stepper/slider combinations all over the place and have never had to concern myself with synch. issues, even though all three in a triple store the same value - get it right and really, it Just Works. You might as well get used to it, that's how it is. --Graham I would simply say that NSStepper only knows about its own state. It is quite inline with MVC. What the op is asking for is a more generic vertically oriented segmented button or a pair of NSButtons. That is super easy to implement. NSStepper is a precise type of form control for incrementing/decrementing a value. The value can be mapped to any sequential data. Dates and times are quite suited to it. Really anything that might have a reasonably narrow, precise granular increment. The only real question I see is whether the data incremented might also need a large scale ability to increment like a slider or nob or a combo box. ___ 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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Was: Re: NSStepper - useless?
William Squires wrote: Why didn't they just make the NSStepper a custom view that draws two arrows, and has two sent actions that you can connect? Or even a variation of NSMatrix with two button cells that look like arrows. That would avoid the problem entirely, and be more intuitive to use. Um. Because that's not what the control *is*. An NSStepper is a numeric input, for which the interface happens to be a pair of arrows. It's not just a pair of arrows that do whatever you want in response to pressing on each of them. Think of stepper in the context of motor. If it was just two arrows with connectable actions it would be less intuitive and more difficult to use for what it was designed to do. If you want to augment the intended behavior, KVO is probably the way to go. If you want to do something completely different, your should have your own control and it shouldn't look especially like a stepper. ___ 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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Was: Re: NSStepper - useless?
From what I've read, the NSStepper has a bug (though practically, you'll never see it); if one were to click the up or down arrow on the control 2^32 times (assuming it's value is a 4-byte signed int,and is initialized to 0), it would wrap around (or raise an exception for integer overflow). Probably not what the user had in mind! Why didn't they just make the NSStepper a custom view that draws two arrows, and has two sent actions that you can connect? Or even a variation of NSMatrix with two button cells that look like arrows. That would avoid the problem entirely, and be more intuitive to use. ___ 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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Was: Re: NSStepper - useless?
On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 6:16 AM, William Squires wsqui...@satx.rr.com wrote: From what I've read, the NSStepper has a bug (though practically, you'll never see it); if one were to click the up or down arrow on the control 2^32 times (assuming it's value is a 4-byte signed int,and is initialized to 0), it would wrap around (or raise an exception for integer overflow). Probably not what the user had in mind! Why didn't they just make the NSStepper a custom view that draws two arrows, and has two sent actions that you can connect? Or even a variation of NSMatrix with two button cells that look like arrows. That would avoid the problem entirely, and be more intuitive to use. Because NSStepper is over 20 years old, dating back to when the way to push values around was to wire up a control's action to another control's -takeValueFrom: method. Besides, all sorts of crazy things tend to happen anyway when you try to use UINT_MAX for anything useful. --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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Was: Re: NSStepper - useless?
On Feb 23, 2012, at 6:16 AM, William Squires wrote: From what I've read, the NSStepper has a bug (though practically, you'll never see it); if one were to click the up or down arrow on the control 2^32 times (assuming it's value is a 4-byte signed int,and is initialized to 0), it would wrap around (or raise an exception for integer overflow). Probably not what the user had in mind! It's pretty irrelevant, because you wouldn't be using a stepper control for values in the billions. That'd be a poor UI. Just like if a table view had a couple billion rows in it in (in 32-bit) it would have broken as well. But it's a terrible thing to do in the first place. ;) Why didn't they just make the NSStepper a custom view that draws two arrows, and has two sent actions that you can connect? Or even a variation of NSMatrix with two button cells that look like arrows. That would avoid the problem entirely, and be more intuitive to use. Not really. The control's intended use is to increment and decrement a value. That's what it does. If you're not using the stepper for manipulating a numeric value, you should probably be using a different control. -- Seth Willits ___ 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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Was: Re: NSStepper - useless?
On Feb 23, 2012, at 10:05 AM, Kyle Sluder wrote: On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 6:16 AM, William Squires wsqui...@satx.rr.com wrote: From what I've read, the NSStepper has a bug (though practically, you'll never see it); if one were to click the up or down arrow on the control 2^32 times (assuming it's value is a 4-byte signed int,and is initialized to 0), it would wrap around (or raise an exception for integer overflow). Probably not what the user had in mind! Why didn't they just make the NSStepper a custom view that draws two arrows, and has two sent actions that you can connect? Or even a variation of NSMatrix with two button cells that look like arrows. That would avoid the problem entirely, and be more intuitive to use. Because NSStepper is over 20 years old, dating back to when the way to push values around was to wire up a control's action to another control's -takeValueFrom: method. Besides, all sorts of crazy things tend to happen anyway when you try to use UINT_MAX for anything useful. Not to mention that this is really a programmer error. If you don't wan the value to overflow, set a sensible maximum. A similar issue could happen from any user-entry field. It's the developer's responsibility (IMHO) to set data entry constraints. Best, Keary Suska Esoteritech, Inc. Demystifying technology for your home or business ___ 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: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
