I am trying to create a custom keyboard using the app keyboard extension. I am happy with the layout but the output is depended on the UITextField's font.
Is there a way to force a different font (use special characters?) while using the keyboard ?
Thank you
It depends.
Text field (or any other view that draws text) uses 2 informations on how to show some text. One is the sequence of characters called String and the other one is how the string should be represented. The second one is then split it things like fonts, colors, line height, line breaking and wrapping...
So the keyboard alone is not enough to for instance present a certain part of word using different fonts. You need at least a bit of access to the item that represents the text. So if you have no access to your text field then the answer is; No, you can not fore a different font when using different keyboard.
If you do have the access then the answer should lie in NSAttributedString. It is a string you can assign to most items under attributedText. This class wraps your raw string and can add many properties to parts of text you want to change. That includes using a different font.
Another approach would be using HTML tags. Again you will need to process this using for instance NSAttributedString or display it with another element like web view.
I would try it with using NSAttributedString. Hook up to delegate and implement textField(: shouldChangeCharactersIn: replacementString:. The implementation itself may still not be easy though.
Related
I have a link within an attributed string that is being then set for a textview. For Accessibility purpose, I want that link to be called out as a link trait, is it currently possible for an attributed string to call out different traits within the string? If not what could be an ideal solution to do that then?
You can look for all the "style runs" of attributes within the text view's attributed text by calling attributes(at:longestEffectiveRange:in:) repeatedly until you come to the style run you want. Thus you can locate the link and obtain its value.
I need help in string formatting in iOS UITextView. I have a textView, for now it`s editable. Now I want to add a few strings. they should be like header and user must be able to type only under it, and when he press ENTER or DELETE line sting should change their position, so at the end it should look like
Header 1(with color not editable)
/* user can type here
*/
Header 2 (with color not editable)
/* user can type here
*/
I think i need to use delegate and attributed string or something,
but I can`t figure it out. HELP please
The best way to achieve this is to make two labels and two text views on top of a scroll view. like
The heights of two text views can by dynamic depending on the text length. And in this case you can avoid endless IF conditions as you would need to put everything in a single Text view.
The advantage of this approach is the label text format will be very easy to set, you can simply set the attributed string in the storyboard.
I need square bulleted(colored) text as follows
◼︎ Some large amount of text that
make it span to the next line.
to be shown in UITextView. But the problem is it doesn't git the padding on the next line.
◼︎ Some large amount of text that
make it span to the next line.
These bulleted text is of static content and hence no need to set it through code.
Also custom font is not working when I set attributed type. Custom font used is Raleway.
You need to set up a ruler with a "hanging indent." I have no idea how to do this manually with text attributes.
I would suggest instead setting up what you want in a .rtf file and then loading an attributed string from the RTF using either initWithURL:options:documentAttributes:error: (which is only available in iOS 9 or later) or initWithData:options:documentAttributes:error: (which is available in iOS >= 7.0.)
You specify an options dictionary of
Objective-C:
#{NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute:NSRTFTextDocumentType}
Swift:
[NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute:NSRTFTextDocumentType]
Is it possible to add a text link into a TextView? I want the link to perhaps behave like a button, where I can assign an action to it.
EDIT: When I say assign an action, I mean actually giving it something in the code. I'm wondering if it's possible to dynamically add a "button" into text that I can assign a coded action to.
Live scenario
Think of something like a dictionary app. Maybe the definition of one word uses another word that you might not know the definition of, so being able to click on that word to instantly search it rather than having to type it in would be a nice user friendly feature. It seems rather unlikely, though, I guess.
I would recommend using NIAttributedLabel from Nimbus, an open source iOS library. You can specify text ranges that are links, and you get delegate messages sent when a user taps on it.
Main Nimbus site: http://nimbuskit.info/
NIAttributedLabel docs: http://docs.nimbuskit.info/interface_n_i_attributed_label.html
in the inspector, go to the Text View Attributes tab then make sure "Detect Links" is checked.
Yes you can. Add the URL into the text view, then open up the Attributes Inspector. You will see an option in there to detect links.
I know of a way, but its a LOT of work. First, you have an NSAttributedString that you have the text view display. Second, attribute the range of text you want to be the button. Third, assign a tap gesture recognizer to the text view and in the method called by the recognizer, you'll use core text to determine if the tap happened over the range of text that represents the buttons.
Heres how youll use core text: create a framesetter with the attributed string. Create a frame from the framsetter with the shape of a square that is the frame of the text view, inset by the padding of the text view. The frame will allow you to get the y origins of every line in the text view and and once you know what line the tap happened on, you can use the line to then figure out exactly what character was tapped on that line by giving it an x offset. Once you know character index on the line, you can add it to the beginning of the range of the line and get the index of the character within the whole string. Then you can check if its within the range of the text that is your button. If it is, you can then call a method to simulate a target action type behavior.
Ive explained the process of how to accomplish this and specified what kinds of core text objects youll need, ill let you look up the specific api details:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Carbon/Reference/CoreText_Framework_Ref/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40005304
You can also use my objc core text wrapper:
https://github.com/mysterioustrousers/MYSCoreText
What about CoreText? It Can draw many kinds of Text .
If I want formatted text (variations on size, position of certain text elements, etc) but don't want to use UIWebView, is Core Text my only remaining option?
I'm shying away from UIWebView primarily because of problems getting the layout right when switching between the iPad and the iPhone. Rather than doing conditional code and dynamically adjusting the HTML depending on device/orientation, I thought I would go ahead and look at using Core Text.
Suggestions?
Perhaps NSAttributedString could help your cause?
An NSAttributedString object manages character strings and associated sets of attributes (for example, font and kerning) that apply to individual characters or ranges of characters in the string. An association of characters and their attributes is called an attributed string. The cluster’s two public classes, NSAttributedString and NSMutableAttributedString, declare the programmatic interface for read-only attributed strings and modifiable attributed strings, respectively.
Using only Apple's SDK, yes Core Text is your only other option. I am sure there are third-party implementations, and you could ask that question if you are interested. Apple has a decent example which shows both how to draw text using Core Text and how to handle keyboard input.