Best way to hook up Font Panel to floater (that isn't first responder)?

FROM : Graham
DATE : Tue Mar 04 00:03:01 2008

In a UI I'm working on, I have an occasional need to use the Font 
Panel from a floating panel (the panel has a "Font..." button that 
brings up the Font Panel to change the font attribute of something in 
my panel).

The problem is that the Font panel sends its changes to the 
changeFont: method of the first responder, which is not my panel. At 
the moment I'm working around this by intercepting the changeFont: 
message in the first responder and posting a notification that the 
panel can make use of. This is OK as long as 1stR is one of my 
classes that has the intercept, but often it's not, so sometimes it 
works, and sometimes it doesn't depending on what the user's 
particular focus is. Clearly not a very good UI....

Is there a way to hook up the Font Panel directly? This needs to be 
"spring loaded" so that the Font Panel follows the user's focus most 
of the time, but switches to my panel when the user clicks the Font 
button but returns to the original 1stR when they go back to the main 
document. Or maybe my thinking is just wrong....?


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S.O.S.