Advice needed for developing multiple window Mac application

Question

I’ve been reading through several books on Mac development, but cannot find the information I’m looking for.

The books all describe how to make floating windows or panes, but never mention how to make them all in one window. A simplified example of what I’m looking to create is shown below:

Basically, there will be three windows; A selector window with radio buttons to choose which NSDocument is currently being used, a window underneath that with buttons that show different windows to the right that allow viewing and manipulation of certain data.

For a example, each NSDocument may have a color value that can be set in the window shown by clicking view A, and some text strings that can be set in the window shown by clicking view B.

So the questions are:

1. Is it appropriate to use a single NSDocument sub-class for each Doc #1 and Doc #2?
2. Which classes should I use to set up the application as shown? NSWindowController? NSWindow? NSPanel?

I’m only looking for guidance on what to read up on, so any pointers are appreciated.

EDIT:

To clarify this further, I want to have a table view where the buttons are (View A & B), and by clicking them they will cause the other window/view to change it's contents.

It's like the split view in the iPad settings application, there is a table view on the left, and when it's pressed the right side changes.

The radio buttons are there only to illustrate that I want more than one Document. I'm guessing I need more than one to handle this? Or perhaps I should place them all in a single NSDocument? Somehow that doesn't seem right.

Answer 1

To achieve what you want you need one window (NSWindow), one window controller and various views each with their own view controller. There are several ways you could set this up, all depending on your requirements:

• You'd have at least 3 views (instances of NSView): one for the selection of the document class, one for the view selection and one for the content. Each view is controlled by a view controller (instance of NSViewController). Additionally you can opt to wrap the views in split views (NSSplitView) so your user can resize the real estate available to each view.

• You have one window with a window controller. If you choose a Document based app template in Xcode, Xcode will generate a subclass of NSDocument which you can use as your window controller (or choose to use Core Data and Xcode will generate a subclass of NSPersistentDocument with all bells and whistles you need to access Core Data for document persistency).

So to come back to your questions:

1: Yes, but depending on your requirements. If Doc #1 is a completely different thing than Doc #2 than you might need to re-evaluate. For example Doc #1 might have completely different persistent requirements than #2.

2: There's no single scenario here, but one that worked for me: Take the project template for a document based app (with or without Core Data). Use the generated subclass of NSDocument (or NSPersistentDocument) as your window controller. Use NSView to implement the views in your window where each view is managed by its own controller, which is an instance of NSViewController.

Answer 2

I know this is an old question, but a way to do it how you want would be to use: ContainerViews and set their embed segue to be the view controllers you want.