Re: IB Palettes?

FROM : Ricky Sharp
DATE : Fri Nov 23 04:04:56 2007

On Nov 22, 2007, at 3:32 PM, Rick Mann wrote:

>
> On Nov 22, 2007, at 1:16 PM, Jonathan Hess wrote:
>

>> The second technique is to specify a custom class is used when your 
>> custom view subclass inherits
>> from a view that Interface Builder provides support for directly. 
>> For example, you can create an
>> NSScrollView instance in Interface Builder and specify that a 
>> custom subclass (MyScrollView) should
>> be used instead, again using the inspector. In this case, when the 
>> nib file is loaded by the application,
>> the view instance has already been created and the MyScrollView 
>> implementation of initWithFrame:
>> is never called. The MyScrollView instance receives an awakeFromNib 
>> message and can configure
>> itself accordingly.

>
> The problem here is that, I don't see how my initWithFrame: could 
> ever get called. IB needs to call that before archiving the view, 
> and it doesn't have the ability to call it.
>
> Even if I had a custom palette for it, I don't see how it could call 
> it, but the phrase "If you have not created an Interface Builder 
> palette" implies that there is a way to create a palette.


I strongly suggest reading up on the docs for initWithFrame for when 
it will be called.  Also, check out my IB Plug-In sample code (I 
posted a link to that to this list and xcode-users).  Part of the 
sample sprinkles in some NSLog statements to make it easy to 
understand what methods IB calls at various points.

The short of it...

If you have a custom plug-in, IB will call initWithFrame: for those 
views that are contained within the plug-in library's nib.  When you 
drag an item off of the library, encodeWithCoder: is called against 
the instance.  Then, when it's dropped into say a window, 
initWithCoder: is called using the encoded data.  Finally, when the 
nib is saved, encodeWithCoder: is used to archive all your view's data.

When you then run your app, all your custom views will be 'init'd' 
with initWithCoder:.  If you ever want to programatically create 
instances of your view, you'd then call either initWithFrame: or 
whatever designated initializer.

So you can see that depending upon what you're doing, either 
initWithFrame: _or_ initWithCoder: will be used to initialize your 
instances.

___________________________________________________________
Ricky A. Sharp        mailto:<email_removed>
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