Main view that should not rotate but subviews that should, including UIPopoverController

I would appreciate some help before spending any more time on trial and error.

Imagine the following: I'm just starting to create something for the iPad that will look something like a dashboard with a number on dials on it. When rotating the iPad (portrait, landscapeLeft etc) the background should not rotate, the dials position should remain but the inside of the dials should rotate to correct position. So, main view should not rotate, but the subviews (inside of the dials) should. I have done this on the iPhone before by telling the viewController to only be in portrait and then checking UIDeviceOrientation, so I thought this was gonna be easy. But my headache st开发者_C百科arts when displaying a UIPopoverController. Since I'm not changing the UIInterfaceOrientation, the UIPopoverController will always be in portrait.

Ideal solution would be to have the main view (self.view from the viewController) not observe changes in rotation, but allowing the subviews to do it, but from what I understand that is not possible. Only other solution I could think of is to not animate the change in rotation, and jut move the subviews (dials) into their new position. Animating them (subviews) make the dance all over the place. But I have not found any good solution on how to do that.

Any thoughts anyone?

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You are correct in thinking that if the main view does not rotate, having the subviews automatically rotate is not possible.

A workaround that springs to mind is this: What is animated when you rotate the view is a change in the view's transform. I am pretty sure that you could register to receive device orientation changes and when you get the change, animate a transform change to a container view that contains all the subviews you want to rotate.

Edit: just read about you having a popover controller.

As far as the popover is concerned, the way the API manages autorotation is to hide the popover and then show it again at the end of the rotation. It shouldn't be too hard to implement similar behavior.

Another thing that occurs to me is this: Is what you want to not rotate just a background? Would it work to just have two backgrounds, one for portrait and one for landscape that you could switch between? It might not be the most pretty looking, but it would probably be easier than recreating autorotation behavior yourself.