Re: Silly NSTextFieldCell tricks

FROM : Peter Ammon
DATE : Thu Jan 31 21:12:43 2008

On Jan 31, 2008, at 11:56 AM, John Stiles wrote:

> 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?


Attributed strings aren't necessary, and NSTextFields do this by 
default.  In IB, make an NSTextField and in the Inspector, set its 
Line Breaks mode to Truncate Tail, and make it resize with the window.

Oh, it doesn't happen if the text field has key focus, so you could 
add another text field to hold the key focus for testing.  If you do 
that, you should see this behavior.

-Peter