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One of the windows in my app contains a table view with a list of files. I have a doubleAction set up so that I can double-click on a row to open that file. The problem is: if multiple rows are selected, a double-click changes the selection so that only the clicked-on row is selected. This means that I can’t select several files and then double-click once to open them all; I have to double-click on each one separately.

I hasten to note that this behavior is “correct” according to the AquaHumanInterfaceGuidelines: a double-click is supposed to be an extension of a single-click, which deselects all rows except the one clicked on. The guidelines notwithstanding, many applications (Finder among them) allow double-clicking on several table rows at once.

Getting the desired behavior is a bit tricky, so I wanted to share my solution in case it is useful to anyone else.

My first attempt used the delegate method selectionShouldChangeInTableView: to prevent deselection when one of multiple selected rows is clicked on. This doesn’t work, however–it turns out that selectionShouldChangeInTableView: is called when rows will be added to the selection, but not when rows will be deselected.

The second attempt, which was ultimately successful, was to subclass NSTableView and override mouseDown: to discriminate between single and double clicks. The idea is to forward genuine single clicks to super, but not double clicks. Of course, at the beginning of a double-click the table view has no way of knowing whether the click will be single or double until it waits for the second click to arrive (or not).

We can implement this waiting period by calling the NSObject method performSelector:withObject:afterDelay: in the subclass’s mouseDown: method. If a double-click event arrives in the meantime, we can call the NSObject class method cancelPreviousPerformRequestsWithTarget: to prevent the single-click.

The obvious thing to do is something like

This doesn’t work, though. For reasons that are not clear to me, the delayed mouseDown: message is sent to the subclass, and not to super. This creates an infinite loop of mouseDown: messages, each delayed by doubleClickThreshold. Not good. Even implementing a superMouseDown: method to specifically forward the message to super doesn’t seem to work.

I finally solved the problem by overriding NSTableView’s selectRowIndexes:byExtendingSelection: method to disable the selection change when a single row of a multi-row selection is clicked on. I also implement a new method, selectOnlyRowIndexes:, that accomplishes the deselection behavior and is called after the time delay. I also override the NSView method dragImage:at:offset:event:pasteboard:source:slideBack: so that a multiple-row selection is preserved after dragging. As a final nicety, I check the user defaults to get the value of the doubleClickThreshold.

Here’s the code:

static unsigned int TAModifierKeyMask = NSShiftKeyMask NSAlternateKeyMask NSCommandKeyMask NSControlKeyMask;

@implementation TAMultirowDoubleClickTableView

@end

Naturally, any comments/corrections are much appreciated. ThomasAnderson

The reason that your first code failed is because super is not an object, per se. When you put in a call to super, the program just uses the superclass’s implementation of the method. And the superclass’s implementation of performSelector:withObject:afterDelay: says to use self’s implementation of the selector. To get around this, try something like this (untested):

…mouseDown: method… [self performSelector:@selector(superMouseDown:) withObject:theEvent afterDelay:doubleClickThreshold]; …mouseDown: method…

Even though you said that you already tried something like this, I’d like to know how this version turns out (I’m on a PC right now, so I can’t test this myself). It’s also possible that the problem lies with the delay; by the time the event is processed, the run-loop may have already moved on. Maybe you should stall the main thread instead (or something; I’m just thinking out loud). Hope this helps (and works). –JediKnil

Thanks for the insight. I had tried exactly what you suggested, but it doesn’t seem to work. The superMouseDown: method is called when it’s supposed to, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. I’d be very interested in knowing what’s going on. In any case, the final code I posted is working perfectly for me so far…. –ThomasAnderson

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Hi Thomas

If you send a mouse event on to the super without increasing the clickCount to 2 then super gets 2 single clicks.

Try this - my TableView works on single click rather thanm double click - which is what I want.

-(void)mouseDown:(NSEvent*)theEvent

{

NSEvent *newEvent = [NSEvent mouseEventWithType:[theEvent type]

 location:[theEvent locationInWindow]

 modifierFlags:[theEvent modifierFlags]

 timestamp:[theEvent timestamp]

 windowNumber:[theEvent windowNumber]

 context:[theEvent context]

 eventNumber:[theEvent eventNumber]

 clickCount:2

 pressure:[theEvent pressure]];

[super mouseDown:newEvent];

return;

}

Note that it is exactly the same event except that the clickCount is now 2 instead of a single click Regards, Keith Wilson from Down Under

The example code ThomasAnderson posted has one small bug – it doesn’t fill in the sender parameter of the doubleAction selector, so it will segfault if you try to access that from within the doubleAction method. The fix is to change the line:

	self target] performSelector:[self doubleAction;

to read:

	[[self target] performSelector:[self doubleAction] withObject:self];

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