Re: Silly NSTextFieldCell tricks

FROM : John Stiles
DATE : Thu Jan 31 20:56:08 2008

Peter Ammon wrote:
>
> 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

Cool!
Is there any way to enable this for an NSTextField in a window? Someone
off-list suggested using attributed strings to do this, but is that the
best way?