Mac Forum / Programming / Perl / June 2005

NSTextView is considerably more complex. It works with instances of  
several other classes - NSTextContainer, NSLayoutManager, and  
NSTextStorage among others.

To change the copy in an NSTextView, you first need to get a  
reference to the NSTextStorage object it's displaying:

my $textStorage = $textView->textStorage();

NSTextStorage is a subclass of NSMutableAttributedString, so we can  
use that class' setAttributedString() method to assign a new string.  
But that method takes an instance of NSAttributedString as its  
argument, so we need to create one first:

my $attributedString = NSAttributedString->alloc()->initWithString
("Hello");
$textStorage->setAttributedString($attributedString);

There's an overview of the text system architecture on Apple's  
developer site, at:
    <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/
TextArchitecture/index.html>

Apple occasionally decides to move the local docs around, but if  
you're using the same Xcode version I am, this link might work for you:
    <file:///Developer/ADC%20Reference%20Library/documentation/Cocoa/
Conceptual/TextArchitecture/index.html>

You've got the right idea - Apple's Cocoa docs.

I've posted a general guideline to help read Objective-C code here:

    <http://camelbones.sourceforge.net/documentation/concepts/
readobjc.html>

Ideally, it would be best to have a complete set of reference  
material that's geared towards Perl. But in practice that's too much  
for me to do alone. I can's simply copy-and-paste Apple's docs -  
they're copyrighted. And there's far, far too much material needed  
for me to write it all.

Yep - you're right. Fixed it.

sherm--

Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
Hire me! My resume: http://www.dot-app.org