Drawing fixed symbol inside NSTextField

Question

I have a NSTextField and I would like a symbol to always appear at the far left, with the content of the text field beginning to the right of it. For example you can imagine a text field with a dollar sign ($) prefixed at the far left. One could just add a label on top of it then subclass NSTextFieldCell to add left padding, which I've done, but I need to reuse this text field in various locations so I would prefer to draw the symbol directly in the NSTextFieldCell subclass if possible. I noticed the drawWithFrame:inView: method, is that where this drawing code should be placed? If so, how does one properly draw a label in that frame?

Answer 1

You can do the drawing inside drawWithFrame:inView: . After your drawing modify the rect before calling the "[super drawWithFrame]. like

-(void)drawWithFrame:(NSRect)rect inView:(NSView*)view
{
  NSString *str = @"$";
  NSRect someRect;//string draw rect
  [str drawInRect:someRect withAttributes:nil];
  rect.origin.x += someRect.size.width;
  rect.size.width -= someRect.size.width;
  [super drawWithFrame:rect inView:view];

}