Re: issue with auto-enable of Menus

[Ivan Vučica]

On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 3:03 PM Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:

Hi,

Ivan Vučica wrote:
>
> Menu items should auto enable/disable depending on whether the target
> object supports the passed selector.
>
> Would it make sense to not have custom code to enable/disable menu
> items, and just have appkit do it for you depending on the target?

auto-enable already works that way. If you attach to NSFirst it goes
down the responder chain.

...yes, I know, that's why I was pointing it out? :)

 

>
> This works especially magically if you use target NSFirstResponder and
> target the “first responder” correctly. Depending on how Graphos
> works, this might be infeasible, of course.

It works but it is not "enough".

If I want to enable "copy" only if an object is selected I need to ask
my document or view if it has something selected inside. If you just
validate if your controller supports copy there still might be nothing
to do.
I wanted to go more "finegrained", up to the point where certain menus
are enabled only if certain things are selected.

I'm not sure you picked up on my suggestion :)

Why not add the object that receives these things to the receiver chain?

Or: why not have every selectable object as an NSView subclass?

It could be infeasible given a codebase. But, if I was writing a new project where I wanted the menus to vary, I would do it this way -- it would also allow me to offload some of the 'is this selected?' logic.

Or, if I need multiple selection, I could create a virtual responder or NSView.