Cocoa: stop field editor from autocomplete space key

Question

I have a custom view with several NSTextField controls for which I want to provide custom completion, and I have successfully implemented everything that uses the NSTextFieldDelegate protocol. Autocomplexes are full or place names, depending on which text field is being edited.

The problem is that auto-completions almost always contain a space character, so if the user enters something that matches the sentence but does not want to accept this sentence, the field editor will accept the sentence when the user presses the space bar. I want the field editor to accept the sentence only with the tab key.

I understand that this will involve subclassing NSTextView to provide a custom field editor, and this is documented by Apple as an acceptable way, however it is not clear to me what methods I need to override and what overridden methods I need to do to get what I want.

Can anyone suggest how this is achieved?

Answer 1

I admit that I had discussed this question for a long time before I found an acceptable answer through Google-fu. Magic code, impudently stolen from the original defendant:

 @interface MLFieldEditor : NSTextView @end @implementation MLFieldEditor - (void)insertCompletion:(NSString *)word forPartialWordRange:(NSRange)charRange movement:(NSInteger)movement isFinal:(BOOL)flag { // suppress completion if user types a space if (movement == NSRightTextMovement) return; // show full replacements if (charRange.location != 0) { charRange.length += charRange.location; charRange.location = 0; } [super insertCompletion:word forPartialWordRange:charRange movement:movement isFinal:flag]; if (movement == NSReturnTextMovement) { [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:MLSearchFieldAutocompleted object:self userInfo:nil]; } } @end 

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