custom view-based nstableview resizing

Question

I have an NSView class, which draws it's contents on a CALayer. These NSView classes are held in an NSTableView which has a single column. I need to make it so the NSTableView adjusts it's size to fit the contents of the NSViews it contains, which can have variable widths, i.e. the NSTableView needs to have the same width as the widest cell. This in turn will allow the user to scroll if the cells' widths are larger than the available area.

Think of it like a multitrack audio editor, where each view is a track, but the tracks can have different lengths.

At the moment, the NSView cells seem to adjust width automatically to the size of the table column, so I can see two possibilities: One is to make it so the cell NSViews set their width, and somehow have this promulgate everywhere else. The other is to have the tableview or nstablecolumn set its width based on the maximum width. I have tried setting the NSTableColumn width and minWidth, but this doesn't seem to work (it doesn't always adjust to the correct size, if the size is big).

Any suggestions or help to make this work?

Answer 1

If you're using CALayer (lets call it root layer) to draw the view contents, try to create another CALayer which will be a child of the root layer (this would be the audio track). You can set the size of the child layer independently and also you will know which one is biggest. Root layer will always be as big as the table view, as you said:"NSView cells seem to adjust width automatically to the size of the table column" - don't try to change root layer size, but child layer size. Once you determine the widest child just change table view frame to be the same width.