Question

How do I prevent a window title from displaying “Edited” for an NSDocument which is dirty?

I’m managing saving and autosaving myself, using a web service, and just don’t want the distraction in the title bar.

I’ve tried overriding:

• NSDocument’s -isDocumentEdited and -hasUnautosavedChanges always to return NO.
• -[NSWindowController setDocumentEdited] to do nothing, or always to use NO regardless of the parameter’s actual value.
• -[NSWindowController synchronizeWindowTitleWithDocumentName] to do nothing.
• -[NSWindow setDocumentEdited] to do nothing, or always to use NO regardless of the parameter’s actual value.

In all cases, the title bar still changes to Edited when I make changes to a saved document.

If I override -[NSDocument updateChangeCount:] and -[NSDocument updateChangeCountWithToken:forSaveOperation:] to do nothing, I can prevent this from happening, but it affects saving, autosaving, and other document behaviors, too.

I also tried this:

[[self.window standardWindowButton: NSWindowDocumentVersionsButton] setTitle:nil];

That displayed a blank string instead of Edited, but the dash still appeared – the one which normally separates the document name and Edited.

Any idea how to pry apart this part of the window from the document?

Answer 1

Several options:

1. To get a pointer to the “dash”, look for a TextField in [window.contentView.superview.subviews] with a stringValue equals to “-“. You can set its text to an empty string as well.

   @implementation NSWindow (DashRetrivalMethod)
   - (NSTextField*)versionsDashTextField
   {
       NSTextField* res = nil;
       NSView* themeFrame = [self.contentView superview];
       for (NSView* tmp in [themeFrame subviews])
       {
           if ([tmp isKindOfClass:[NSTextField class]])
           {
               if ([[(NSTextField*)tmp stringValue] isEqualToString:@"—"])
               {
                     res = (NSTextField*)tmp;
                     break;
               }
           }
       }
       return res;
   }
   @end
   

2. You can override NSWindow’s -setRepresentedURL:. This would also affect the NSWindowDocumentIconButton and the popup menu, but you can manually create it if you want by: [NSWindow standardWindowButton: NSWindowDocumentIconButton].

3. Override one of these three NSDocument’s undocumented methods:

   // Always return here NO if you don't want the version button to appear. 
   // This seems to be the cleanest options, besides the fact that you are 
   /// overriding a private method.
   - (BOOL)_shouldShowAutosaveButtonForWindow:(NSWindow*)window;
   
   // Call super with NO
   - (void)_setShowAutosaveButton:(BOOL)flag; 
   
   // Here the button and the dash are actually created
   - (void)_endVersionsButtonUpdates; 
   
   // Here Cocoa hide or unhide the edited button
   - (void)_updateDocumentEditedAndAnimate:(BOOL)flag