Retired Document
Important: This document is deprecated. Please see Cocoa Text Architecture Guide for information about font handling in the Cocoa text system.
Initiating Font Changes
The user normally changes the font of the selection by manipulating the Font panel (also called the Fonts window) and the Font menu. These objects initiate the intended change by sending an action message to the font manager. There are four font-changing action methods:
The first three cause the font manager to query the sender of the message in order to determine which trait to add or remove, or how to modify the font. The last causes the font manager to use the settings in the Font panel to modify the font. The font manager records this information and uses it in later requests to convert fonts, as described in Responding to Font Changes.
When the font manager receives an addFontTrait
or removeFontTrait
message,
it queries the sender with a tag
message,
interpreting the return value as a trait mask for use with convertFontToHaveTrait
or convertFontToNotHaveTrait
,
as described in Converting Fonts Manually.
The Font menu commands Italic and Bold, for example, have trait mask
values of ItalicMask
and BoldMask
,
respectively. See the section “Constants” in the NSFontManager
reference documentation for a list of trait mask values.
When the font manager receives a modifyFont
message,
it queries the sender with a tag
message
and interprets the return value as a particular kind of conversion
to perform, via the various conversion methods described in Converting Fonts Manually.
For example, a button whose tag value is SizeUpFontAction
causes
the font manager’s convertFont
method
to increase the size of the NSFont passed as the argument. See the NSFontManager
method modifyFont
for
a list of conversion tag values.
For modifyFontViaPanel
,
the font manager sends the application’s Font panel a panelConvertFont
message.
The Font panel in turn uses the font manager to convert the font
provided according to the user’s choices. For example, if the
user selects only the font family in the Font panel (perhaps Helvetica),
then for whatever fonts are provided to panelConvertFont
,
only the family is changed: Courier Medium 10.0 point becomes Helvetica
Medium 10.0 point, and Times Italic 12.0 point becomes Helvetica
Oblique 12.0 point.
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