Number of characters that fit in NSTextView - swift

Note: This question is for a MacOS app and not for iOS
I have a business requirement to convert this amazing iOS custom text view(ReadMoreTextView) to macOS(AppKit). However I am finding it difficult to convert it. I was hoping it would be easy since both UITextView and NSTextView use NSTextContainer, NSLayoutManager and NSTextStorage. But it seems like they behave differently on both platforms.
I need to calculate the number of characters or character range that is visible on the NSTextView. I am trying to use the following method but it is always returning the complete character range instead of visible character range(actual text length instead of visible text length). I couldn't find any other method in layout manager which can help on this. Please let me know if you have any pointers on this.
Here is the code:
extension NSLayoutManager {
func characterRangeThatFits(textContainer container: NSTextContainer) -> NSRange {
//this is the current maximum number of lines
//container.maximumNumberOfLines = 3
var rangeThatFits = self.glyphRange(for: container)
rangeThatFits = self.characterRange(forGlyphRange: rangeThatFits, actualGlyphRange: nil)
return rangeThatFits
}
}
Answers in Swift and Objective C are welcome.
Update:
Please ignore any scrolling on the textview since I am disabling all types of scrolling. My intention is to have a view with "... More" button at the end of it then on tap of it the view gets expanded. For this reason NSTextField based solution is also welcome if we can find visible characters in that.

You can get the visible portion of the NSTextView using its visibleRect method. From there, you just need to get the text range that falls within that rect. So, if your view supports vertical scrolling only, something like this should work:
let visRect = textView.visibleRect
let layoutManager = textView.layoutManager!
let container = textView.textContainer!
let glyphRange = layoutManager.glyphRange(forBoundingRect: visRect, in: container)
let charRange = layoutManager.characterRange(forGlyphRange: glyphRange, actualGlyphRange: nil)
Be aware that if your NSTextView supports horizontal scrolling rather than just vertical, you'll have to do a little more work than this, since you'll possibly be looking at a non-contiguous block of text. In that case, you'll have to get a bunch of smaller ranges for each visible line fragment instead of just grabbing the whole range like this.

Related

How to identify programmatically generate TextViews in swift?

I need a way to identify programmatically generated text views. The problem is that I am creating a list of textviews, and I want to control them with code. How can I set and ID or something to know which one is which?
use tag
let textview = UITextView()
textview.tag = your value in int

NSTextView in NSOutlineView with IntrinsicContentSize setting wrong height

I have an outlineView in which I am putting NSTextViews that resize when edited (think outliner app). I have most of this working, but some behaviour is inconsistent.
On my NSOutlineView I set:
outlineView?.usesAutomaticRowHeights = true
For my cell-views I subclass NSTextView. I set the following auto layout bits:
self.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
setContentHuggingPriority(NSLayoutConstraint.Priority.defaultHigh, for: NSLayoutConstraint.Orientation.vertical)
And I override the intrinsic content size calculation on the NSTextView:
override var intrinsicContentSize: NSSize {
guard let manager = textContainer?.layoutManager else {
return .zero
}
print("\(manager.usedRect(for: textContainer!).size) \(string)")
return manager.usedRect(for: textContainer!).size
}
(I was calling ensureLayout on the layoutManager in the code above but it adds nothing)
intrinsicContentSize is called twice per text view when they are added to the outliner. The first time the size returned is correct, but on the second call some of the text wraps unnecessarily. A printout of the two passes on intrinsicContentSize for 4 text views are shown below. The column width is 281, so none of these strings should wrap. The first pass they all fit to one line (14 high), on the second pass, the last two strings wrap, which is strange because they are not the longest strings:
(178.744140625, 14.0) New pointwddwek kelekwelek...
(100.720703125, 14.0) Related Subjects
(119.400390625, 14.0) Related Publications
(87.150390625, 14.0) Related Terms
(178.744140625, 14.0) New pointwddwek kelekwelek...
(100.720703125, 14.0) Related Subjects
(74.705078125, 28.0) Related Publications
(54.484375, 28.0) Related Terms
It is consistently the same strings that result in the same behaviour. E.g. the string "Related Subjects" never wraps, the string "Related Terms" always wraps.
When the views are presented, the text is NOT actually wrapped, even thought the usedRect value implies that it would be. The text is shown correctly, but the row view in the outliner is too high because it thinks it has two lines of text.
Any pointers where I might be missing something? Does 'ensureLayout' somehow refer to it's previous calculation and then have rounding issues when fitting the same string into its last-calculated width?
OK, the key here was that the text was presented correctly but the size of the view was wrong.
I created a delagate for the NSTextView's layoutManager. The text was being set out 3 times after the NSTextView was added to the NSOutlineView (which seems to be terribly inefficient!). intrinsicContentSize was only being called on the NSTextView after the first two text layouts.
Calling invalidateIntrinsicContentSize from within layoutManager: didCompleteLayoutFor... fixed everything up.
I still don't understand what is happening here though, and why all these methods are being called so many times when stuff is presented. I guess it is to do with the complexity of auto layout and things pushing against each other.
I also don't understand why only some of the calculations were incorrect during the process.
Please comment here if anyone can shine some light on this!

Why is my UIlabel displaying points of ellipsis (dot dot dot)?

I am trying to print a text string that includes the current time on a UILabel.
var currentDateTime = Date()
let dateFormatter = DateFormatter()
dateFormatter.timeStyle = .medium
var savedNumberPlusDate = "\(counterValue) : \(dateFormatter.string(from: currentDateTime))"
saveLabel.text = savedNumberPlusDate
The first part works great, but the time comes in as points of ellipsis or dot dot dot (...)
Can't figure out what I am doing wrong.
It's because of label size - not all content fits into it's bounds, so rest is cut. There is UILabel property - Line Break that defines what to do with extended content. But the solution you are probably looking for is to adjust it's size. You can do it via autolayout constraints.
When I have programmatically set UILabel.text, if the length of that string is greater than the length of the text I set in the storyboard, I've gotten the "..." truncation.
Instead of guessing the correct number of points to set as my label's width, I've set the text in the storyboard to be a template for the values I'll be setting programmatically. In your case, I would set the UILabel's text in the storyboard to be something like "9 : 99:99:99 XM".
Well I found the answer. My UILabel on the Storyboard is too narrow, and so it is cutting off the time, and so adding the ...
The simple fix is to drag the label bigger.
The better fix is to use AutoLayout so this doesn't happen again. For example in this SO answer: [How to created an expandable label in Swift][1].
Fixed it.

Objective c - Text indentation

This question is about implementing text indentation ("The placement of text farther to the right to separate it from surrounding text") in iOS.
Take for example the following text:
This is the first section.
This is the second one,
with two lines.
This is the third.
Notice that the second row in section 2 begin farther to the right and just below the line above.
My code contains an array of NSString, each one should be display as a section with numeric bullet like above. for example:
NSArray *array = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:#"1. This is the first section.", #"2. This is the second one, with two lines.", #"3. This is the third.", nil];
I use UILable to display the text on screen.
To set the text from the array to the label, and to separate each string in a new line I use
myLabel.text = [array componentsJoinedByString:#"\n"];
Any ideas how to get this effect?
This is possible to some degree in iOS6 with - [UILabel setAttributedText:].
NSMutableParagraphStyle *paragraphStyle = [[NSMutableParagraphStyle alloc] init];
paragraphStyle.headIndent = 29;
myLabel.attributedText = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:
#"1.\tShort line.\n2.\tLong line with content that triggers wrapping.\n3.\tShort line."
attributes:#{NSParagraphStyleAttributeName: paragraphStyle}];
This adds indentation to the subsequent lines. It looks like iOS doesn't support tab stops in the same way as OSX so I'm not seeing a way to adjust the gap between the number and the text. This is probably possible in CoreText.
Of course, you could also just replace the label with a UIWebView and have full formatting control on all versions of iOS at the cost of performance.
Well I decided to implement it my self without using Core Text, I just created a view strcture that make all the indentation work by itself, and let you customize it as you want.
For all of you interested in the implementation, you can see the source code and an example project here:
ECListView Project
UILabel is not going to cut it if you have any kind of specific layout requirements. For that, you're going to need to dig into Core Text. The good news is that Core Text will let you do any kind of text layout you can imagine. The bad news is that all that power brings with it some complexity, so to use it you're going to have to invest some time learning how the framework works.
An alternative that's suitable in some situations is to use a web view to display your text. UIWebView will let you do whatever text layout you can manage using HTML and CSS.

Center Multi-Line Text on UIButton using IB

How do you center text line-by-line in a UIButton using Interface Builder? I am scouring the options and just don't see it. Here's the button:
You can't set the text to be centered in your nib. But you can change the alignment in your code:
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
self.myButton.titleLabel.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentCenter;
}
I know this is an old question, but I came across it in my own attempt to center the multi-line text of a UIButton in IB. What I found is that by default, when "title" is set to "plain" and "line break" is set to "word wrap" the longest line of the title text is centered and the other lines are left justified to this line (similar to the OP's screen capture).
In order to have all the lines centered properly, "title" needs to be changed to "attributed." This provides many more options to customize the appearance of the title text. Center each of the lines of text (you can now actually change the alignment for each line individually). Also be sure to set "line breaking" to "word wrap" under "more..." above the text. There seems to be a bug with how this line breaking option behaves, at least in Xcode 4.5 at this time, because the text on the button in IB will look incorrect, truncating everything except the first line. It seems the "word wrap" and truncate options are interpreted backwards in IB, but if you run the app it behaves correctly in the simulator.
Actually you can do it in interface builder.
Just set Title to "Attributed" and then choose center alignment.
#from comments : To wrap you need to set Line Break to Character Wrap or Word Wrap.
P.S : This might not render in xcode. But, it will work at runtime.
You can set the center multiline text in UIButton through storyboard.
This is how you make the text have two or more lines.
Set the below key Path at
Identity Inspector --> User defined runtime attributes --> add new key value pair with below
titleLabel.textAlignment - NSNumber - 1
and
titleLabel.numberOfLines - NSNumber - 5 - or use "0" meaning "any number"
It will look like this:
Note that (2016) unfortunately it does not actually show the two or more lines of text in Storyboard (you see only the first one), but it works perfectly when you run in simulator or device.
For IB set Title to "Attributed" and select center alignment (like Alexander Danilov suggested)
But if you want to do it in code using Swift 4:
// center button text
yourButton.titleLabel?.textAlignment = .center
// enable multiline if needed
yourButton.titleLabel?.numberOfLines = 0
Not all options are done using Interface Builder therefore you must do some of them by coding, and usually we do them inside the function viewDidLoad.
To center your text inside a button by code you can use the following:
button1.contentHorizontalAlignment = UIControlContentHorizontalAlignmentCenter;
You can use the same technique to align the text to any direction, for example to the left:
button1.contentHorizontalAlignment = UIControlContentHorizontalAlignmentLeft;
But this will take the text too much to the left and you might want to have some space before it keeping the alignment to the left, so you add an inset after the aligning code as follows:
button1.contentEdgeInsets = UIEdgeInsetsMake(0, 10, 0, 0);
In this case we are pushing the text from the Y axis by 10 points. I say here points not pixels because as you know Apple uses the points technique to measure distances to be able to adapt easily between normal display and retina display (where retina is 2 times the normal one).
I haven't tried it out yet, but I think a way to do it might be create a CGRect on top of your button, then use it as a frame, create a label, and then you can play with the label, set the textAlignment property to be UITextAlignmentCenter, and set the background color to be clear.
This works with uitableview but I don't know whether that will work for button. Hope this helps.