Re: Silly NSTextFieldCell tricks

FROM : Peter Ammon
DATE : Thu Jan 31 20:53:38 2008

On Jan 31, 2008, at 11:27 AM, John Stiles wrote:

> I've noticed that in table views, the NSTextFieldCell has the 
> ability to ever-so-slightly squash its contents horizontally, to 
> fit inside the table cell, before eventually giving up and 
> truncating them with ellipses.
>
> Is there any way for me to programmatically do the same thing to my 
> own NSTextFieldCell?
>
> As I'm typing this, suddenly I'm thinking "maybe I could fake it by 
> altering the cell's bounds while leaving the frame alone"… but is 
> there a better way? Changing the bounds would make the text 
> thinner, which isn't quite the same as squeezing the letters more 
> tightly together.


Hi John,

This is called "tightening" in the API, and it's enabled by default 
on text fields (actually, on any control) when the line break mode is 
one of the three truncation line break modes in NSParagraphStyle.h. 
You can control the threshold between tightening and truncation with 
the setTighteningFactorForTruncation: method on NSMutableParagraphStyle.

Hope that helps,
-Peter