Question

I have a window containing three NSTextFields, like this:

+------------------------+
| +--------------------+ |
| | field1 (editable)  | |
| +--------------------+ |
| +--------------------+ |
| | field2 (editable)  | |
| +--------------------+ |
| +--------------------+ |
| | field3 (selectable)| |
| +--------------------+ |
+------------------------+

While field1 and field2 are editable, field3 is set to “selectable”, i.e. I can use the mouse to select text in it and copy from it, but I cannot edit the text.

field2 references field3 as its nextKeyView outlet, but when I press the Tab key when field2 is the first responder, field1 gets activated instead of field3.

As soon as I set field to ‘editable’ in Interface Builder, tabbing works as intended.

How can I enable tabbing into read-only NSTextFields?

Answer 1

It’s very easy when we know, just create a subclass of NSTextFieldCell :
Add a class in Xcode with this name “myNonEditableCellClass“

Code in myNonEditableCellClass.h

#import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h>
@interface myNonEditableCellClass : NSTextFieldCell {}
@end

—

Code in myNonEditableCellClass.m

#import "myNonEditableCellClass.h"

@implementation myNonEditableCellClass
- (BOOL)acceptsFirstResponder {
    return YES;}
@end

Go in “Interface Builder” : select the third NSTextField, click again to select the NSTextFieldCell, changes its class to myNonEditableCellClass in the Inspector.

That’s it