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

Answer 1

As Ken says, NSCells and NSViews are different, and you can only lay out NSView hierarchies in NIB, not NSCells (which don't have any explicit hierarchy).

On the other hand, there's nothing preventing you from having a hierarchy of NSViews and using that to draw your NSCell -- you could add them as a subview of your cell's parent view, tell them to display, and remove them from the window and nobody would be the wiser.

In this case, using a NIB would work, although it seems like a ton of hassle. Typically I've just replaced the object that takes NSCells with a custom one that takes my NSViews, but that means writing your own mouse-handling code, which is very touchy.

On the other hand, my approach lets you bind the views' values in NIB, so you don't have to do any extra work, which is cool.