Quickies for NSDocument

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General

• Getting a document's window [permalink]
  For 10.3 and later systems, use -windowForSheet (which doesn't tell you the window associated with a particular sheet, but instead returns the window to be used for showing sheets, which is usually what you want when talking about the document's window - Thanks to Peter Hosey for this one).

  For folks stuck in 10.2 land, or who want to do it themselves, there's always this:

  - (NSWindow *) window
  {
      NSArray *windowControllers;
      windowControllers = [self windowControllers];
  
      NSWindowController *controller;
      controller = [windowControllers objectAtIndex: 0];
  
      NSWindow *window;
      window = [controller window];
  
      return (window);
  
  } // window

• Increasing the length of the "Open Recent" menu [permalink]
  10-15 items not enough for your "Open Recent" menu of a favorite app? Set the app's NSRecentDocumentsLimit default to something more to your liking:

  defaults write com.flyingmeat.acorn NSRecentDocumentsLimit 137

  (thanks to Gus Mueller for this one)

• Keeping backup files of documents [permalink]
  override NSDocument's keepBackupFile:

  - (BOOL) keepBackupFile
  {
      return (YES);
  } // keepBackupFile
  

  This will do the tilde thing to the older version of the file.

• Mapping a window to its document [permalink]
  

      NSDocumentController *documentController;
      documentController = [NSDocumentController sharedDocumentController];
  
      BWBorkStitchDocument *noteDocument;
      noteDocument = [documentController documentForWindow: noteWindow];

• Storing window position in the document [permalink]
  If you want to store the window position in your document, you'll need to store and restore the [window frame] of the window in question. (That's left as an exercise to the reader, based on how you're storing your document contents.) When restoring the window location, you have to turn of NSWindowController's cascading, otherwise it'll honor your width and height, but not your origin. In your document's windowControllerDidLoadNib method, you'll need:

      [[self windowController] setShouldCascadeWindows: NO];
  
      NSWindow *window;
      window = [self window];
      [window setFrame: loadedWindowBounds display: YES];
  

NSWindow

• Using a custom title for NSWindowController windows [permalink]
  When using utility windows in a document-based app, NSWindowController is handy for handling a lot of the grungy details. When using a shared window (like an inspector window), you want its title to reflect that of the document. Override windowTitleForDocumentDisplayName to set the title. In this case, it becomes of the form "Overview of Untitled 2":

  - (NSString *) windowTitleForDocumentDisplayName: (NSString *) displayName
  {
      NSString *string;
      string = [NSString stringWithFormat: @"Overview of %@", displayName];
  
      return (string);
  
  } // windowTitleForDocumentDisplayName

• Window Position Autosave for NSWindowController-owned inspectors [permalink]
  It's nice to autosave the position of inspector windows so that they come backup where the user put them. Unfortunately, NSWindowController wipes out the autosave name that's set in Interface Builder. You have to set it in code in your window controller subclass. The windowDidLoad method (which is used instead of awakeFromNib) is a handy place:

  - (void) windowDidLoad
  {
      [super windowDidLoad];
  
      [self setShouldCascadeWindows: NO];
      [self setWindowFrameAutosaveName: @"pannerWindow"];
  
      // and any other windowDidLoad work to be done
  } // windowDidLoad
  

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