How to make Pop-Up Menus in Custom Quartz Composer Patches How to make Pop-Up Menus in Custom Quartz Composer Patches

Posted by smokris on 2007.07.05 @ 12:26

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screenshot of a custom Quartz Composer patch's pop-up menuMaking pop-up menus in custom Quartz Composer patches is actually surprisingly easy.

This release is only compatible with Tiger (10.4).
Please see kineme.net for Leopard-specific informations.
  1. Set up a QCIndexPort input. QCIndexPorts provide values from 0 to whatever max you specify using - (void)setMaxIndexValue:(unsigned int)max;.
@interface IndexPortPopUpDemoPatch : QCPatch
{
    QCIndexPort *inputPerson;
}

...

@end
  1. Add the “menu” key to the port’s input attributes:
    <key>inputAttributes</key>
    <dict>
        <key>inputPerson</key>
        <dict>
            <key>description</key>
            <string>Person</string>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>Person</string>
            <key>menu</key>
            <array>
                <string>Arthur Dent</string>
                <string>Ford Prefect</string>
                <string>Zaphod Beeblebrox</string>
                <string>Marvin</string>
                <string>Trillian</string>
                <string>Slartibartfast</string>
                <string>Agrajag</string>
                <string>Wonko the Sane</string>
            </array>
        </dict>
    </dict>
  1. Make sure you set the max index value in the initWithIdentifier function:
- (id)initWithIdentifier:(id)fp8
{
        id z=[super initWithIdentifier:fp8];

        [inputPerson setMaxIndexValue:7];

        return z;
}
  1. Read the value out of the QCIndexPort using - (unsigned int)indexValue;.

Steve Mokris is a developer at Kosada, Inc.

4 Comments so far

can you make and post a screen shot of it working within Quartz Composer itself? Holy cow I’m so excited to give this a shot this weekend :)

Submitted by cwright on 2007.07.05 @ 12:55. |

cwright -

The screenshot in the top right corner is actually QC itself.

smokris

Submitted by smokris on 2007.07.05 @ 12:58. |

Ahh, right you are. I wasn’t familiar with the Inspector window in QC :) I thought that was the Interface Builder’s Inspector guy. My Bad :)

Submitted by cwright on 2007.07.05 @ 13:18. |

To generate menu items at runtime, you have to override QCIndexPort’s initWithNode method. it looks like this:

  • (id)initWithNode:(id)fp8 arguments:(id)fp12;

Here’s some code to do just that:

  • (id)initWithNode:(id)fp8 arguments:(id)fp12 { NSMutableDictionary *config = [fp12 mutableCopy]; NSMutableDictionary *attr; NSMutableArray *menu = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

    [config autorelease]; [menu autorelease];

    attr = [config objectForKey:@”attributes”];

    [menu addObject:@”foo”]; [menu addObject:@”bar”]; [menu addObject:@”baz”];

    [attr setValue:menu forKey:@”menu”];

    return [super initWithNode:fp8 arguments:config]; }

Submitted by cwright on 2007.07.10 @ 10:29. |