Organising items in Interface Builder

Question

I have a number of problems with handling container hierarchies and object groups in Interface Builder.
1. If I Group a number of items (say a slider and its labels), this does not mean that I can move the entire group as a unit - I still have to Shift-click all the individual items to get them to move. If I Cut a group, then only the subitems I have selected will be Cut, but if I Copy, then the entire group will be copied. This strikes me as somewhat inconsistent.
2. If I create a Box and create items in it, those items will align with the Box and follow it around if I move the Box. But if I Cut or Copy an item from one Box and then place it in another box, it will not be a subitem of that Box, and will not follow when the Box is moved. I have not been able to find a way to indicate a new parent to a relocated item, is there one?
3. Sometimes I can drag across a box to select subitems in it, sometimes dragging will instead cause the box to move. I have not been able to discern a clear pattern, does anyone know what the preconditions are for selection one way or the other?
4. The on-line manual for Interface Builder is rather superficial and does not cover questions such as these, nor do the books on XCode/Objective C that I've looked in. Is there any document or collection of notes that goes into further details on the functions of Interface Builder?
PowerBook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.7)   Interface Builder 2.5.4

Answer 1

Hi Kai,
1. What you mention first is not what I see as far as I can tell - If you have a bunch of controls, drag over to select them all and group them together (⌘G) a dotted line appears and surrounds the group. I cannot move any one member of the group without the whole group moving as well - expected behaviour. However, your observation of cutting and copying seems correct. Perhaps the 'cut' operation should remove the entire group to the clipboard as copy does, leaving the currently witnessed behaviour for the 'delete' key.
2. Yes. Drag it over the box and let go, then click and hold without moving it and you should notice the shading change a little followed by a green plus icon if you then move it. Drop this now and it'll become a subitem of the box. This also works in reverse.
3. Click somewhere outside the box to deselect it. Click somewhere in the box - but not on any of the contents - eight selection dots should appear around it. This is the box itself selected and dragging will now move the whole box and contents (again, don't hit any of the items inside when dragging). Click somewhere outside again to deselect it. Now double click somewhere inside it (not on items) and a sort of blue lined box with tick marks on it should appear - this shows that the inside is selected and dragging will select items in it rather than move the whole thing. This can also be observed by directly clicking on one of the items inside (puts you straight inside it).
4. Not sure, you sort of pick these things up by trial and error and reading posts and such like (very much like some of the more lesser known OS tricks, modifier keys, etc). There may well be a nice collection of tips on the net somewhere but I haven't come across it yet...
IB seems a little flaky on some of this stuff, especially when repeating actions like putting something into a box, then removing it, then putting it back in, etc. Seems it loses the plot somewhere and you have to dump it and grab another one. Same sort of thing with messing about with matrices - often it starts to misbehave. Hopefully all this sort of thing and what others have complained about from time to time are the result of minimal updates to IB over the last couple of years. Here's looking forward to IB 3!