Question

While playing around with NSAttributedString, I have run into some strange behavior from UITextView. Say I have two properties:

@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UILabel *label;
@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UITextView *textView;

In the owning controller for these properties, I have the following code:

NSDictionary *attributes = @{NSFontAttributeName : [UIFont systemFontOfSize:20.],
                            NSForegroundColorAttributeName: [UIColor redColor]};
NSAttributedString *as = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"Hello there!" attributes:attributes];


NSMutableAttributedString *mas = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"Hello where?" attributes:nil];
[mas addAttribute:NSForegroundColorAttributeName value:[UIColor yellowColor] range:NSMakeRange(3, 5)];

self.label.attributedText = as;
self.label.attributedText = mas;


self.textView.attributedText = as;
self.textView.attributedText = mas;

When running in the simulator, the label looks (er, use your imagination) as follows, using the system default font:

<black>Hel</black><yellow>lo wh</yellow><black>ere?</black>

The text view looks as follows, using the system font in size 20.0:

<red>Hel</red><yellow>lo wh</yellow><red>ere?</red>

It seems like the text view is combining the attributes from the two attributed strings. I find this a surprising result, and expected it to behave like the label.

I suspect this is a bug. If it is not, how and why does UITextView treat attributedText differently than UILabel?

(XCode Version 4.5.1)

Answer 1

I filed a bug report with Apple. They came back and said that the issue was addressed with iOS 7 beta 1. Verified as fixed.