Cocoa Internals/Dialogs
Common Considerations
Modality
None of the Cocoa dialogs (OpenFile, SaveFile, Font or Color) are modal!
This means that one can open a dialog and keep using the other application windows and the application menu.
This doesn't work well with the LCL design, where each dialog is opened by an Execute method which doesn't return until the modal dialog is closed.
For this particular reason, Cocoa WS does the following:
- every dialog is called as the application modal window (preventing other windows of the application from getting any user input);
- the application menu is disabled, until the dialog is closed;
- where applicable, "Ok" and "Cancel" buttons are added to dialogs to indicate to a user that the dialog can be closed to make the selection.
No restoration
Starting with macOS 10.7 Cocoa will attempt to restore the Application windows between Launches.
It's a nice user feature, which conflicts with LCL. Since LCL adds custom controls to a dialog, and the restoration requires a special "restorationClass" to be provided.
Instead of restoring dialogs, CocoaWS explicitly forbids the restoration of them.
Class Override
Unlike NSApplication, dialog classes cannot be overwritten in the following manner:
TCocoaColorPanel.sharedPanel
Doing that will cause problems using class methods of the sharedPanel (and likely something else)
No Tags
macOS system is using "tags" on files. It seems to be a file system feature that's used commonly in macOS.
LCL doesn't have a concept of tags.
By default Save dialog is showing a user an ability to select a tag. Since LCL cannot handle it properly (it cannot return the value, nor it has APIs to save the value), the dialog hides the tag selection, by default.
File Type Selection
There's no "native" file type selection in macOS dialogs. Instead, there's an opportunity to add "custom options" to an open/save dialog, known as accessory view.
The accessory view is used to place the run-time file type selection into the open/save dialog.
File Type Filters
There are two ways of filtering out files that can be opened. (Note that "filtering types" is not used when using Save dialog.)
1) Assign the list of file extensions or file types (UTI's) via the setAllowedFileTypes: method. Allowing "any" file can be achieved by using the setAllowsOtherFileTypes: method. Considerations:
- extensions need to be specified without a dot: "png", "jpg" instead of ".png", ".jpg";
- setAllowedFileTypes - is unable to verify compound extensions, such as "tar.gz".
2) Perform the file check manually through the panel:shouldEnableURL: method.
File Dialog Options
Some of the options are not supported, please refer to the table below for the implementation details
| Options | Supported | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ofReadOnly | No | |
| ofOverwritePrompt | No | In macOS prior to 10.15 it was possible to implement the feature by tricking the NSSaveDialog when selecting the name.
However, this ability was removed in 10.15 (due to security considerations?) So now, overwrite prompt will always show up |
| ofHideReadOnly | No | There's no concept of "readOnly" files in macOS filesystems.
There's also no configuration in the dialog, to hide files |
| ofNoChangeDir | No | |
| ofShowHelp | No | |
| ofNoValidate | No | |
| ofAllowMultiSelect | Yes | NSOpenPanel.setAllowsMultipleSelection() |
| ofExtensionDifferent, | No | |
| ofPathMustExist | No | |
| ofFileMustExist | No | |
| ofCreatePrompt | No | |
| ofShareAware | No | System native dialogs are always share aware OR act within sandbox allowances |
| ofNoReadOnlyReturn | No | No concept of "readonly" file |
| ofNoTestFileCreate | No | |
| ofNoNetworkButton | No | All shares and networks are available or restricted by SandBox limitations |
| ofNoLongNames | No | Any file can have long name. OSX never suffered from 8.3 limitation |
| ofOldStyleDialog | No | There's no old style on macOS
...but, there's an opportunity to use in order to allow some emulation |
| ofNoDereferenceLinks | No | Links are treated by the system. |
| ofNoResolveLinks | No | Links are treated by the system |
| ofEnableIncludeNotify | No | |
| ofEnableSizing | No | Dialogs are always sizable to the macOS rules |
| ofDontAddToRecent | No | |
| ofForceShowHidden | Yes | NSSaveDialog.setShowsHiddenFiles() |
| ofViewDetail | No | |
| ofAutoPreview | No | |
| - | (default) | canCreateDirectries
The feature controls, if a user can create directories within the dialog. Since Windows dialogs allows creation of folders, macOS LCL dialogs also allows the creation at all times. |
| - | (default) | extensionHidden
The name of the file, selected by the user hides the extension. Since on Windows there's no control over how the file is displayed. The property is left to its system default. |
| - | (default) | treatsFilePackagesAsDirectories
If set to true, a user can treat (Application) bundles as directories and navigate into the bundle. There's no such concept in LCL, the value is at system default |
