Text Display

Display text and check spelling.

Overview

In most cases, you can lay out your app's text using the NSTextField or NSTextView classes (or their subclasses). Use the NSTextField class to add either a label or a simple text input. Use the NSTextView class to provide more comprehensive layout and editing features for larger bodies of text.

For example, NSTextView supports rich text, attachments (graphics, file, and other), input management and key binding, and marked text attributes. NSTextView works with the font panel and menu, rulers and paragraph styles, the Services facility (for example, the spell-checking service), and the pasteboard.

NSTextView also allows customizing through delegation and notifications—you rarely need to subclass NSTextView. You rarely create instances of NSTextView programmatically either, because objects on Interface Builder’s palettes, such as NSTextField, NSForm, and NSScrollView, already contain NSTextView objects.

For even more powerful and more creative text manipulation (such as displaying text in a circle) see TextKit.

Spell Checking

The NSSpellServer class lets you define a spell-checking service and provide it as a service to other apps. To connect your app to a spell-checking service, use the NSSpellChecker class. The NSIgnoreMisspelledWords and NSChangeSpelling protocols support the spell-checking mechanism.

Topics

Text Views

class NSTextField

Text that the user can select or edit and that sends its action message to its target when the user presses the Return key.

protocol NSTextFieldDelegate

A protocol that a text field delegate can use to control its field editor action menu.

class NSTextView

A view that draws text and handles user interactions with that text.

protocol NSTextViewDelegate

A set of optional methods that text view delegates can use to manage selection, set text attributes, work with the spell checker, and more.

class NSText

The most general programmatic interface for objects that manage text.

Spell Checking

class NSSpellChecker

An interface to the Cocoa spell-checking service.

protocol NSChangeSpelling

A protocol that responder objects can implement to correct a misspelled word.

protocol NSIgnoreMisspelledWords

A protocol that enables the Ignore button in the Spelling panel to function properly.

See Also

Text

TextKit

Manage text storage and perform custom layout of text-based content in your app's views.

Fonts

Manage the fonts used to display text.