NSCollectionView's newItemForRepresentedObject Method

FROM : Carter R. Harrison
DATE : Sun Feb 03 14:14:39 2008

There was some discussion on NSCollectionView's 
newItemForRepresentedObject method earlier on the list, but it didn't 
quite cover what I was looking for.  Hopefully you all can help.  To 
make a long story short, I'm trying to figure out how to modify the 
size of each view as it is added to an NSCollectionView.  Read on for 
details.

I built my NSCollectionView in Interface Builder and this of course 
built an NSView and NSCollectionViewItem prototype in IB as well with 
all the connections already hooked up for me.

Now I want to subclass NSCollectionView so that I can override the 
newItemForRepresentedObject method.  My intention is to modify the 
frame of each object's individual view as it is added to the 
NSCollectionView.  This requires me to look at some of the subviews 
within the view itself - which at this point are just Interface 
Builder outlets since my view was built in IB.

When the newItemForRepresentedObject method runs, I have verified that 
I can get a reference to each view as it is created, but using the 
view's IB outlets to get to the various subviews doesn't seem to 
work.  See code below...

- (NSCollectionViewItem *)newItemForRepresentedObject:(id)object
{
   NSCollectionViewItem *newItem = [super 
newItemForRepresentedObject:object];
   CHMessageView *newView = (CHMessageView *)[newItem view];
   //Next line of code for some reason returns nil.
   CHMessageTextView *newTextView = [newView messageTextView];
   //More code here that is not relevant.
   return newItem;
}

So my next thought was to actually create my view programmatically 
rather than through IB.  Sorta like this - the problem here is that I 
don't know what to put for the view's frame in the initWithFrame method.

- (NSCollectionViewItem *)newItemForRepresentedObject:(id)object
{
   NSCollectionViewItem *newItem = [super 
newItemForRepresentedObject:object];
   //What do I use for the new view's frame?
   CHMessageView *newView = [[CHMessageView alloc] 
initWithFrame:NSMakeRect(?, ?, ?, ?)];
   CHMessageTextView *newTextView = [newView messageTextView];
   [newItem setView: newView];
   return newItem;
}

So hopefully that wasn't too confusing, but my main question is - how 
do I modify the size of each subview as it is added to the 
NSCollectionView?  Thanks everybody.  This list has been so helpful.