Re: Proxy Window of another

FROM : Uli Kusterer
DATE : Sun May 04 15:53:05 2008

Am 04.05.2008 um 13:25 schrieb Daniel:
> Basically I wanted to display a window which modifies "graphically"
> another window. Under graphically I mean for example zooming of some
> parts of the window or change colors and so on and also to preserve
> the funcionality of the original window.


  So, basically you're trying to write a GUI editor, like Interface 
Builder? In that case, I think what you'd really want to do is build 
your view hierarchy slightly differently. It's been a while since I 
tried writing a GUI editor in Cocoa, and I did half a dozen in Classic/
Carbon, so I may be mixing up things here, but there are several 
approaches, all of which might work depending on what you want to do:

1) Use NSImage and NSBitmapImageRep's -initWithFocusedViewRect: method 
to create a snapshot of each view. Then you can create a custom view 
for each view that draws such a snapshot, accepts clicks, draws a 
selected look, etc.

2) Wrap each view in a container view. I think there was some way to 
make a view get clicks before its subviews get them. That way, you can 
intercept the clicks and do something special with them when needed, 
and also draw a highlight to indicate a selection.

Views are objects just like any other, so you can easily create a new 
one using alloc/initWithFrame:, then use addSubview to insert it in 
another view etc., and thus dynamically change the view hierarchy or 
even build a completely new one, without a NIB. Same applies to 
NSWindows.

Cheers,
-- Uli Kusterer
"The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere..."
http://www.zathras.de