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Hi. I joined the AbiWord project (http://www.abiword.com/) and decided to fix Bug #285 - add Yes to All to Save and Quit dialog box ( http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=285 ). In order to do so I had to do a lot because NSAlertPanel only allows 3 buttons, no more. I have everything ready, but when I go to run the project, I get this error when I choose to quit - they appear in Terminal when I run it from there:

2007-03-26 15:28:46.797 AbiWord[5982] *** Assertion failure in -[XAP_CocoaApplication _commonBeginModalSessionForWindow:relativeToWindow:modalDelegate:didEndSelector:contextInfo:], AppKit.subproj/NSApplication.m:3057 2007-03-26 15:28:46.819 AbiWord[5982] Modal session requires modal window

I tried subclassing and implementing canBecomeKeyWindow, but that didn’t work. The documentation is unclear at the method (it probably likes sheets better - not what I want because more than one document is open). So what do I do? - PietroGagliardi

PS - I had to force quit after the error - every time I tried to quit, it regenerated the error. Otherwise, everything worked perfectly.

Every single time I have ever seen this error, it has been because I was passing nil to beginModalSessionForWindow: or one of its friends.

That was it, actually! Now what? Here’s my code:

@interface XAP_Cocoa_MyModalWindowClass : NSWindow { } @end

@interface XAP_CocoaDialog_MessageBox_Controller : NSObject { IBOutlet XAP_Cocoa_MyModalWindowClass *_messageBoxPanel; IBOutlet NSTextField *_messageBoxPrimary, *_messageBoxSecondary; IBOutlet NSButton *_messageBoxYes, *_messageBoxNo, *_messageBoxYesToAll, *_messageBoxCancel; }

@implementation XAP_CocoaDialog_MessageBox_Controller

@end

@implementation XAP_Cocoa_MyModalWindowClass

@end

The window is connected in my NIB file. Should I get rid of the new window class altogether?

This error appears most often when a NIB file hasn’t been loaded using NSBundle. Send NSBundle the +loadNibNamed:owner: method (sending the appropriate owner in the nib as the owner argument), and this will get it unpackaged and ready to use. Be warned however, to only do this once. Period. Calling it multiple times will create multiple instances of everything, and calling it in something like -awakeFromNib will cause an infinite loop, I bet you can guess why. Hope this helps. –LoganCollins —- Thanks, Logan. So how do I unload the nib file after I’m done with it - that only makes sense, right?

Subclass NSWindowController instead and these problems are mostly taken care of.

That’s done, but now it shows the dialog box in an infinite loop.

@interface XAP_CocoaDialog_MessageBox_Controller : NSWindowController { IBOutlet NSTextField *_messageBoxPrimary, *_messageBoxSecondary; IBOutlet NSButton *_messageBoxYes, *_messageBoxNo, *_messageBoxYesToAll, *_messageBoxCancel; }

@implementation XAP_CocoaDialog_MessageBox_Controller

@end

created with

XAP_CocoaDialog_MessageBox_Controller *ctrl; ctrl = XAP_CocoaDialog_MessageBox_Controller alloc] initWithWindowNibName:@”xap_CocoaDlg_MessageBox_YesNoAllCancel”];

What’s happening?

Hello?

Please, have patience.

I’m not sure why you expect a response, since you don’t give us enough information. Saying that it shows your window “in an infinite loop” is useless. Tell us what is happening. What diagnostics have you done, where does the loop happen, what have you done to try to solve this? If you ask a useless question then expect to get no answers.

[[MailingListMode HowToAskQuestions

Sorry. I haven’t patched the source code to make it available to the public yet. So I run the app and go to Quit AbiWord. Out pops the dialog box. When I click a button, the window just stays there, as if it closed and reopened again. Using NSLogs to test this out resulted in the fact that there was no infinite loop, but rather the buttons never got the event. If it still doesn’t work, I’ll repost with an explanation.

UPDATE: The buttons are connected in the nib file, so something else is wrong.

Please, please, please read over MailingListMode and understand why this style of asking frequent questions and posting frequent updates is not appropriate to this site.

If you take the time to go over your work and diagnose things carefully, you will get a much better response from this site. There is normally no need to post things this frequently. If you have a question, take as much time as you can to make the question as complete and useful as possible. When you run into a new problem, repeat that process. Posting these little updates and such is useless and counterproductive.

OK, then I’ll give you the full scoop on doing this with AbiWord source code.

First, get DarwinPorts.

Next, go into Terminal and type all of this while in your ~ directory:

sudo -s

Type your password, hit Return, and type these commands:

port install autoconf port install automake exit

DarwinPorts’ version of autoconf and automake are better than Apple’s.

Next, type these commands:

svn co http://svn.abisource.com/abimacsdk/trunk/portssdk cd portssdk export PATH=/opt/local/bin:$PATH make all cd .. export CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.abisource.com:/cvsroot cvs login

The password is “anoncvs”.

cvs -z3 co abi cd abi

Now download my patch: http://disk.mac.com/pietro10/Public/mypatch Download it to the abi folder that is now created in your Home folder.

Type:

patch -p0 < mypatch ./autogen.sh –with-abiports make src/wp/main/cocoa/AbiWord.app/Contents/MacOS/AbiWord

Create and type some stuff in 3 documents. Don’t save. Just go to Quit AbiWord. Choose Cancel, then go to Quit AbiWord again. The window is now nil for some reason!

It is good to see that Abiword builds from the head once again. Your proposed solution to the bug ought to be rejected by the MacOS Abiword maintainer on the grounds that it doesn’t match the expected MacOS X user experience. Further, the existing behaviour does match Carbon applications such as Appleworks.

I don’t myself have an axe to grind, as I don’t use word processors, but you could quickly see what I mean if you look at, say, TextForge. The Dialogue should run something like “You have N documents with usaved changes …”, with buttons <Review Changes ...>.

At this point you might want to look at the Abiword blogs and see which applications are being compared to Abiword and design yours to match.

You might also want to bear in mind that bug 285 looks like being passed by, and you might want to open a Cocoa specific bug.

Sorry to be so negative, and I will endeavour to look at your code. - Ben

I’ve known AbiWord to be compared with OpenOffice.org and it suffers the same thing, and I used up my trials of MS Office and iWork so I can’t try those.

How would I use Carbon to write a 4-button messagebox? The default Alert only has 3 buttons.

Both BC Spreadsheet and TextForge have that feature, so I think it is a Cocoa/NSDocument thing. I’ll go chat with the developers if there is no other way.

I wasn’t able to get OpenOffice to compile, I ran into the problem described here: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18166&sid=378c54311b2542f59df49717d2b171aa , but NeoOffice has carbon behaviour (and is probably a carbon application tout court).

We don’t take carbon questions here, I believe that there is a comparable carbon site to this cocoa one, but there are also numerous mailing lists and other resources for carbon. It has been a little while since I was last asked a carbon question: I would probably refresh my understanding by reviewing the Simpletext and Textedit example applications. If memory serves there is a page on the Apple site that does the same thing rather entertainingly.

(Abiword was once a carbon application - it could be compiled using Codewarrior on Classic Mac).

The dialogue for quitting when there are unsaved documents is described at http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGWindows/chapter_17_section_6.html ; (it is neither Cocoa nor NSDocument specific, and should be available to any native application you write). See further information at http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/AppArchitecture/Tasks/GracefulAppTermination.html concerning reviewUnsavedDocumentsWithAlertTitle:cancellable:delegate:didReviewAllSelector:contextInfo: ; which - and perhaps this is what you meant - does indeed cover Cocoa and “the constellation of NSDocument, NSWindowController, and NSDocumentController objects”.

You should review the runModalForWindow: method, for example, I have found these applications (all on the CocoaOpen page) which use it for an application modal window: CVSEdit uses ‘ runModalForWindow: to run an Application Modal Panel stored in its MainMenu.nib; Stackinator uses runModalForWindow: to run an Application Modal Panel stored in a different .nib (opened with loadNibNamed: ); TeXShop uses uses runModalForWindow: to run an Application Modal Panel stored in the Document .nib; Freecell uses runModalForWindow:to run an Application Modal Panel stored in its MainMenu.nib.

You should review the NSRunAlertPanel function for example, http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Miscellaneous/AppKit_Functions/Reference/reference.html .

You should look at these pages on the Apple site: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/WinPanel/Concepts/UsingModalWindows.html , the “Types of Dialogs and When to Use Them” page that I gave you earlier, http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Sheets/Tasks/UsingAppModalDialogs.html , http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/Classes/NSAlert_Class/Reference/Reference.html .

Sorry about MailingListMode - I plead guilty under Section 2 of that page and I will atone by refactoring this one, and perhaps adding any good stuff to WindowPriority .

I downloaded the current sources using these instructions: http://www.abisource.com/developers/download.phtml and didn’t recognise yours (is that the intel branch) and built using http://www.abisource.com/~fjf/ . Have you been able to download your patch?