Re: Multiple controls in a table cell

FROM : j o a r
DATE : Wed May 07 23:29:39 2008

On May 7, 2008, at 1:46 AM, matt.<email_removed> wrote:

> I had independently experimented with a similar hack (adding row 
> views as subviews of the Table) and was about to flesh it out until 
> I came across your pre-baked example. Before I dive too deeply into 
> using it, do you see any problem in using it over the custom cell 
> subclass method? I need to support 10.4 and later so alas 
> NSCollectionView is a no-go.



NSCollectionView is not always a good replacement for NSTableView in 
any case, it's more like a NSMatrix than a NSTableView - In that it 
doesn't have a notion of columns.

The problems are what you could expect: You have to write a lot of 
code yourself, and you're re-purposing the NSTableView in a way that's 
very clearly different from its intended use - Something that's 
typically difficult to maintain.

The drawback of using custom cell subclasses is that some things are 
difficult to re-create in a cell, as I noted in that article - 
Otherwise they're of typically to be preferred.


> I assume that you have real-world code running in real software that 
> uses SubviewTableViewCell. Have you had any issues with it that make 
> it risky?




I have personally never used this code in production. A former 
colleague of mine picked up the code and used it, but I was never 
involved in that effort so I don't know how well it worked out for 
him. I also don't work for that company any more, so I don't know if 
they still use it or not.

I think that it can be made to work, but you need to keep in mind that 
it is sample code, not a fully fleshed out component. You should 
expect there to be things that you have to fix, and complement. A 
thing that comes to mind is tab focus key chain management.

Good luck,

j o a r