Adding Editable Text to clEditViews

One of the Newton 2.x OS Q&As
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This document was exported on 7/23/97.

Adding Editable Text to clEditViews (6/9/94)

Q: How can I add editable text to a clEditView? If I drag out a clParagraphView child in NTK, the text is not selectable even if I turn on vGesturesAllowed.

A: clEditViews have special requirements. To create a text child of a clEditView that can be selected and modified by the user (as if it had been created by the user) you need to do the following:

    textTemplate := {
        viewStationery: 'para,
        viewBounds: RelBounds(20, 20, 100, 20),
        text: "Demo Text",
    };
    AddView(self, textTemplate);

The view must be added dynamically (with AddView), because the clEditView expects to be able to modify the contents as the user edits this item. The template (textTemplate above) should also be created at run time, because the clEditView adds some slots to this template when creating the view. (Specifically it fills in the _proto slot based on the viewStationery value. The _proto slot will be set to protoParagraph) If you try to create too much at compile time, you will get -48214 (object is read only) errors when opening the edit view.

The minimum requirements for the template are a viewStationery of 'para, a text slot, and a viewBounds slot. You can also set viewFont, styles, tabs, and other slots to make the text look as you would like.