What’s new with text and text interactions

Text plays a crucial role in every application. It’s the primary way to consume information and communicate. Here are the tools to create a powerful text experience in your app:

Changes to System selection UI

• a completely redesigned text cursor on all platforms.

• an inline, interactive switcher when changing input languages.

• more ergonomic selection handles when doing range selection.

• a completely new loupe to make it easier to place the cursor in large bodies of text.

• works with UITextViews or UITextFields automatically.

• clients of UITextInteraction also gets the new selection UI.

• for a highly customized UI displaying text added UITextSelectionDisplayInteraction

  • UITextSelectionDisplayInteraction is a new type of UIInteraction that can be installed on any UIView.

  • must adopt UITextInput protocol.

  • provides the cursor view and cursor accessories and the range highlight and selection handles.

  • All of these views are replaceable.

 // Add selection display interaction
 let selectionDisplayInteraction = UITextSelectionDisplayInteraction(textInput: document, delegate: self)
 view.addInteraction(selectionDisplayInteraction)

 // call this whenever selection changes in your document
 selectionDisplayInteraction.setNeedsSelectionUpdate()

• added a new API for displaying a loupe namely Text loupe.

  • new UITextLoupeSession object for displaying loupe.

  • can be used on any view.

  • UITextSelectionDisplayInteraction or UITextInput isn’t required to use it.

  • recommended to use a gesture recognizer, such as UIPanGestureRecognizer to drive the loupe’s updates.

Text item actions and menus

• much more customizable using new APIs on UITextViewDelegate

• makes it possible to modify the primary action for text items.

• New methods on UITextViewDelegate

func textView(_ textView: UITextView, primaryActionFor textItem: UITextItem, defaultAction: UIAction) -> UIAction?

func textView(_ textView: UITextView, menuConfigurationFor textItem: UITextItem, defaultMenu: UIMenu) -> UITextItem.MenuConfiguration?

• Text items represent the content that support item interactions.

• includes text attachments, represented by NSTextAttachment, and links, represented by NSLinkAttributeName

• UITextItem now also supports tagging custom ranges of text for interaction.

• use the UITextItemTagAttributeName on the attributed string representing the range of text you wish to make interactive.

• now possible to change the default tap or menu behavior when a text item is interacted with.

• redirect known links to existing views within the app or add custom menus to parts of the text.

Lists and bullets in TextKit 2

• Supports several different kinds of bullets.

• Automatic numbering of items.

• Localized for every language.

let textList = NSTextList(markerFormat: .circle, option: 0)
let mutableParagrapghStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
mutableParagraphStyle.textLists = [textList]

textStorage.addAttribute(.paragraphStyle, value: mutableParagraphStyle, range: NSRange(location: 0, textStorage.length))

Dictation on MacOS

• while scrolling, the indicator next to the cursor will stick to the edge of the scroll view, and offer a button to return to the current position in the document.

• If you’re using a standard text control in AppKit like NSTextView, you’ll get this behavior right out of the box.

• NSTextInsertionIndicator is a new API for macOS that also allows to remain consistent with the system’s selection UI

  • System-provided insertion point

  • Customizable

  • Follows current accent color

  • Supports dictation effects

//code example to add NSTextInsertionIndicator
let insertIndicator = NSTextInsertionIndicator(frame: .zero)
documentView.addSubview(insertIndicator)

//Block to handle effect views added by system
insertionIndicator.effectsViewInserter = { view in
documentView.addSubview(view, positioned: .below, relativeTo: insertionIndicator)
}

func didLoseFocus() {
// When resigning first responder, make sure to hide cursor.
insertionIndicator.display = .hidden
}

• updates to the frame will automatically be animated with a glow effect.

• to disable the glow effect, remove the showEffectsView option from automaticModeOptions

• after changing input modes, an effect view is displayed beneath the cursor in horizontal text to show the language selection UI.

• to override the placement of this UI, specify preferredTextAccessoryPlacement in your implementation of NSTextInputClient

• adopt NSTextInputClient and implement the selectionRect and documentVisibleRect

• Notify the system about scrolling beginning and ending.

Internationalization

• Dynamic line-height adjustments

  • automatically adjust the line height in UILabel or UITextField

  • depends on preferred languages in Language and region settings.

  • independent of actual language of content.

  • only affects text elements that use text styles.

  • use UIFont.preferredFont(forTextStyle:)

  • make sure clipsToBounds = false

  • Ascenders and descenders for languages like Thai and Hindi will often protrude beyond the line height bounds.

  • Respond to changes in vertical.

• Wrapping and hyphenation

  • Improved line breaking for Chinese, German, Japanese, and Korean.

  • Optimized for text style and language.

  • Adopt text styles.