Discern, Design, Generate

The delegate drawing pattern implemented by a RHView is not a decorator pattern. It is a simple delegate pattern. I intend you, though, to use it somewhat differently than a traditional delegate. A traditional delegate would be responsible for drawing directly in the RHView. And, of course, you can use it that way. I use it differently though.

I create all of my drawing commands as methods of the RHView. This allows complex graphics commands to be encapsulated in the view. The delegate becomes a drawing coordinator and does not a directly draw in the view.

Here is a simple example — a subclass of RHView to draw a graph:

#import "RHView.h"

@class Curve;

@interface GraphView : RHView {

@private
    Curve *curve;
}

@property (retain, nonatomic) Curve *curve;

- (void) drawBorder: (CGRect) rect inContext: (CGContextRef) context;
- (void)  drawCurve: (CGRect) rect inContext: (CGContextRef) context;

@end

It has a single instance variable — a curve. And it has two drawing methods — -drawBorder:inContext: and -drawCurve:inContext:. The delegate object only needs to implement the RHViewDelegate protocol.

Here is a sample delegate implementation:

- (void) drawView: (GraphView *) view inRect: (CGRect) rect inContext: (CGContextRef) context {

    [view  drawCurve: rect inContext: context];
    [view drawBorder: rect inContext: context];

}

All drawing commands are encapsulated in the subclass of RHView. Your view controller is, in my opinion, the natural delegate of the RHView. You then just create new view controllers to coordinate the new behavior. It is totally congruent with the MVC pattern.

This pattern really cleaned up my code. I hope it cleans yours up too.

An aside: the RHViewDelegate is the key mechanism needed to initiate a decorator drawing pattern.