UITextView setSelectedRange changes editable property - ios

Question

From the start, my UITextView with editable property to true is not editable (via settings in a NIB). The behaviour is such that a user can select and copy text but not edit. This is the way things should be.
However, if I make a call to setSelectedRange, a side effect is that the editable property is set to YES.
Setting it back to NO [textview setEditable:NO] scrolls to the bottom of the textView and undoes my programmatic selection. It also doesn't work, as editing becomes enabled anyway. The keyboard appears and everything.
I need to be able to select something programmatically and keep the textView in a state where users can only copy and select text.
[textView select:self];
[textView setSelectedRange:selectedText];
I'm stuck. Looking for any advice you can give.
This doesn't work:
[textView select:self];
[textView setSelectedRange:selectedText];
[textView setEditable:NO];
I've also tried setting the delegate function textViewShouldBeginEditing to return NO:
- (BOOL)textViewShouldBeginEditing:(UITextView *)textView {
return NO;
}
That just locks everything down and I can't select any text.

Answer 1

I realize this has already been answered, but here is an improvement I made to keep the popout menu, just disable certain options;
-(BOOL) canPerformAction:(SEL)action withSender:(id)sender {
bool response = [super canPerformAction:action withSender:sender];
if(response && (action == #selector(cut:) || action == #selector(paste:) || action == #selector(delete:) || action == #selector(_promptForReplace:))) {
return NO;
}
return response;
}
canPerformAction is called per defined action. Calling the parent method will take care of most of these cases, but I have also decided to disable cut,paste,delete and spelling suggestions (_promptForReplace).

Answer 2

This appears to work for me in a similar situation:
just let the textview be editable
[textView setDelegate:self];
[textView select:self];
[textView setSelectedRange:range];
add a function (BOOL)textView:shouldChangeTextInRange:replacementText: returning NO
and the final trick: assign an empty view as a keyboard for the textview, using:
textView.inputView = [[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease];

Answer 3

The textView should be editable:
[textView setEditable:YES];
Do the selection:
[textView select:self];
[textView setSelectedRange:range];
Have these in the delegate:
To disable the menu (not ideal for me but it's ok):
-(BOOL)canPerformAction:(SEL)action withSender:(id)sender
{
[UIMenuController sharedMenuController].menuVisible = NO;
return NO;
}
To disable the keyboard:
textView.inputView = [[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease];
To disable editing:
- (BOOL)textView:(UITextView*)textView shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range replacementText:(NSString*)text {
return NO;
}