Change selection's font programmatically?
-
Hi,
I'm trying to write code that does the same as clicking a font name
in the font panel. I.e. I want it to apply a font - whose family name
I have - to the selection, without changing any sizes, styles etc.
After messing a while with NSFontManager and NSFontPanel, this is the
best I could come up with:
-(void) doMyChangeFont: (NSString*)familyName
{
NSFontManager* fm = [NSFontManager sharedFontManager];
NSFont* newFont = [fm convertFont:[fm selectedFont]
toFamily: familyName];
[[NSFontPanel sharedFontPanel] setPanelFont: newFont isMultiple: NO];
[fm modifyFontViaPanel: self];
}
however, this code smashes the styles and only applies the first
character's style to the entire range of text.
I've also looked at NSText - which doesn't look very helpful either,
and through the text system docs, but all this arcane stuff about
conversion and all those messages going back and forth between the
panel and various receivers is way over my head.
Do any of you know an API that might be better? Has anyone done this
yet? Can anyone give me a hint where to look, and if it's in the text
system docs, a general overview of how the weird stuff in there works
in plain English?
--
Cheers,
M. Uli Kusterer
------------------------------------------------------------
"The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
http://www.zathras.de
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On Sep 1, 2004, at 5:35 AM, M. Uli Kusterer wrote:> I've also looked at NSText - which doesn't look very helpful either,
> and through the text system docs, but all this arcane stuff about
> conversion and all those messages going back and forth between the
> panel and various receivers is way over my head.
It's really not that hard--call changeAttributes: on your text view,
passing yourself as the sender. You will receive a call to -
(NSDictionary *)convertAttributes:(NSDictionary *)attributes for each
attribute run in the selected text. From the attribute dictionary you
are passed, take the font attribute and apply your font manager
convertFont: call to it. Return a new dictionary that is the same as
the old one, except that it has the converted font rather than the
original one. That's it.
If you need to do this pre-10.3, it's not that much harder either.
Call rangeForUserCharacterAttributeChange to get the range to change.
Make sure that it's non-empty, and that
shouldChangeTextInRange:replacementString:nil returns true. Call
beginEditing on the text storage, then iterate over the range by
effective ranges, e.g. using attribute:NSFontAttributeName
atIndex:longestEffectiveRange:&effectiveRange inRange:. For each
effective range, do the conversion as I described above. When you're
done, call endEditing on the text storage and didChangeText on the text
view. Then make the same font conversion on the typing attributes.
Douglas Davidson
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At 9:49 Uhr -0700 01.09.2004, Douglas Davidson wrote:> It's really not that hard--call changeAttributes: on your text view,
> passing yourself as the sender. You will receive a call to -
> (NSDictionary *)convertAttributes:(NSDictionary *)attributes for
> each attribute run in the selected text. From the attribute
> dictionary you are passed, take the font attribute and apply your
> font manager convertFont: call to it. Return a new dictionary that
> is the same as the old one, except that it has the converted font
> rather than the original one. That's it.
Do you mind if I include this in a bug report to Radar? This is much
more comprehensible than anything I found in Apple's docs by far.
Maybe a little graphic (flow diagram or whatever) would have helped
there...> If you need to do this pre-10.3, it's not that much harder either.
> Call rangeForUserCharacterAttributeChange to get the range to
> change. Make sure that it's non-empty, and that
> shouldChangeTextInRange:replacementString:nil returns true. Call
> beginEditing on the text storage, then iterate over the range by
> effective ranges, e.g. using attribute:NSFontAttributeName
> atIndex:longestEffectiveRange:&effectiveRange inRange:. For each
> effective range, do the conversion as I described above. When
> you're done, call endEditing on the text storage and didChangeText
> on the text view. Then make the same font conversion on the typing
> attributes.
I think I can live with 10.3 only, but anyone browsing the archives
will probably be very happy to find this here.
Thanks a lot for this explanation, it helped me a great deal!
--
Cheers,
M. Uli Kusterer
------------------------------------------------------------
"The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
http://www.zathras.de
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On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 19:50:25 +0200, "M. Uli Kusterer"
<Witness.of.TeachText...> said:> At 9:49 Uhr -0700 01.09.2004, Douglas Davidson wrote:
>> It's really not that hard--call changeAttributes: on your text view,
>> passing yourself as the sender. You will receive a call to -
>> (NSDictionary *)convertAttributes:(NSDictionary *)attributes for
>> each attribute run in the selected text. From the attribute
>> dictionary you are passed, take the font attribute and apply your
>> font manager convertFont: call to it. Return a new dictionary that
>> is the same as the old one, except that it has the converted font
>> rather than the original one. That's it.
>
> Do you mind if I include this in a bug report to Radar?
I hope you will. The docs do say that calling -[NSTextView
changeAttributes:] causes the sender to be sent convertAttributes:, but they
don't say that you're sent it for each style run or what to do when you get
it. Things are not helped by the fact that convertAttributes: is documented
only under NSFontManager; it should be documented as part of the explanation
of -[NSTextView changeAttributes:]. Otherwise it is unclear that
convertAttributes is something you can do in the first place; it seems like
it's something that only the font manager does. m.
--
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On Sep 1, 2004, at 3:42 PM, Matt Neuburg wrote:> I hope you will. The docs do say that calling -[NSTextView
> changeAttributes:] causes the sender to be sent convertAttributes:,
> but they
> don't say that you're sent it for each style run or what to do when
> you get
> it. Things are not helped by the fact that convertAttributes: is
> documented
> only under NSFontManager; it should be documented as part of the
> explanation
> of -[NSTextView changeAttributes:]. Otherwise it is unclear that
> convertAttributes is something you can do in the first place; it seems
> like
> it's something that only the font manager does. m.
The AppKit release notes for 10.3 contain essentially the same
description of the changeAttributes:/convertAttributes: mechanism as
the one I gave in my email--as they should, since I wrote that section
of the release notes. Bear in mind that the release notes are written
by the engineers, and should be studied carefully.
Douglas Davidson
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On or about 9/1/04 4:40 PM, thus spake "Douglas Davidson"
<ddavidso...>:>
> On Sep 1, 2004, at 3:42 PM, Matt Neuburg wrote:
>
>> I hope you will. The docs do say that calling -[NSTextView changeAttributes:]
>> causes the sender to be sent convertAttributes:, but they don't say that
>> you're sent it for each style run or what to do when you get it. Things are
>> not helped by the fact that convertAttributes: is documented only under
>> NSFontManager; it should be documented as part of the explanation of
>> -[NSTextView changeAttributes:]. Otherwise it is unclear that
>> convertAttributes is something you can do in the first place; it seems like
>> it's something that only the font manager does. m.
>
> The AppKit release notes for 10.3 contain essentially the same
> description of the changeAttributes:/convertAttributes: mechanism as
> the one I gave in my email--as they should, since I wrote that section
> of the release notes. Bear in mind that the release notes are written
> by the engineers, and should be studied carefully.
Agreed. My note was not meant as a criticism but as a positive suggestion on
how to improve the docs. I don't think it's wrong to propose that this
information from the release notes be incorporated, a year later, into the
reference docs. m.
--
matt neuburg, phd = <matt...>, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/
pantes anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei
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