[jmassung]

Hopefully the 3 problems I am having w/ Obj-C and PB/IB are simple (as I am
new to Obj-C) and can be quickly worked out

1. I can make a "preferences" window, fill it with controls and be fine.
However, the only way I can think of to get those values is to make a NSView that is "all-encompassing" of my program, which has outlets to those values. It works, but is very sloppy. Is there another way?

2. Kind of related to #1 -- How can make an object that I "have access to"
in PB? I know that is worded poorly. Example (from #1): I make a MyPrefs
object in IB that is a subclass of NSObject, then instantiate it w/ all the
outlets to controls in the Preferences window. But how do I access those
values in my code? MyPrefs is a class type, not an instance variable... I
hope my problem is understood =)

3. Lastly, how on earth do I make a modal dialog? I assume this has to be done with a "sheet", but I don't have any idea how to begin doing this...

Thanks,
Jeff

[mccullocht]

To create a set of preferences to access globally, the best way is using the NSUserDefaults object. You can basically use it like an NSMutableDictionary to set and retrieve preferences for just about anything, it handles all the nitty-gritty details of saving the preferences, etc. Check out this tutorial at CocoaDevCentral.

[lindberg]

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but here goes :-)

You can have as many nibs as you like in a program. When the NSBundle method -loadNibNamed:owner: is used, the owner exists before the .nib is loaded, and is represented in the .nib as the "File's Owner". Thus, typically you create a controller class of some sort that has outlets to what you need (plus some action methods maybe), and use that class to load the .nib, passing self as the owner. You don't need an NSView subclass particularly, in fact you almost always won't want an NSView subclass for this kind of thing.

If you make your controller a subclass of NSWindowController, then it will deal with loading the .nib for you, which is kind of nice. You can override the -windowDidLoad method to do any initialization you need after the nib is loaded but before it becomes visible.

As noted, use NSUserDefaults to actually store the preference settings. Code that needs to use pref values can then just ask NSUserDefaults for them.

If you want an example of a pref panel controller that's a subclass of NSWindowController, you can see my ManOpen application at http://www.clindberg.org . It's a little light on comments, but it does work.