objective c - Is it possible to design NSCell subclasses in Interface Builder?

Question

I'm trying to subclass NSCell for use in a NSTableView. The cell I want to create is fairly complicated so it would be very useful if I could design it in Interface Builder and then load the NSCell from a nib.

Is this possible? How do I do it?

Answer 1

The question was about a subclass of NSCell; the other answers seem to be doing something else, likely taking advantage of UITableViewCell being a view.

NSCell is not a view. While laying a custom cell out in IB would be a useful thing to be able to do, I think the answer is basically "no, this is not possible". When you subclass NSCell, you're pretty much just doing your own drawing. There isn't support subcells, or parameterized auto layout (ala NSView's springs and struts), which is I suspect what you're looking for.

The only caveat is that you could design an NSCell subclass that did do layout of sub-elements and provided parameters for setting those subelements and all tweakable parameters. Then, you would need to write an IB plugin to make that cell and accompanying inspector available at design time in IB.

This, however, is probably harder than writing a little custom app that does more or less the same thing. Put an NSCell in a control in the middle of a window, and make yourself UI for tweaking the parameters you're interested in. Bindings can make this pretty straightforward for positioning stuff (i.e. bind an x value to a slider), though you will not get direct manipulation of the elements of course. When you're done, you could archive your cell and load the archive at runtime in your real app, or you could just log out the properties and set them in code in your app.