You could always write your own controller to correlate multiple arrays into keys.

Sure. I'd like to see such a solution, but it doesn't scale unless you can make the binding variadic in IB (like enabled1, enabled2, etc.). That would require an IB plug-in; I don't know how much easier it is on Leopard, having not yet tried it, but doing it in Tiger is a PITA.

OR
Why not just use an object if you have two arrays that perfectly match up and just have an array of that object?

That's what I suggested: “In my case, of course, this required creating a new model class for a key-value pair, to replace the parallel arrays of NSStrings.”

No, there is nothing special about an array of strings failing. an array of any simple object type will fail. You need to have an array of model objects that support attributes.

Right. That's what I figured out: The columns need to all specify various attributes of a single array of objects.

They could be NSStrings, if you wanted to have two columns bound to length and description. They could be NSCalendarDates, which gives you rather more options, but those are “discouraged” since Leopard. They could be NSURLs. (This should all be fine as long as the objects are immutable; mutable objects will fail because they are not guaranteed to mutate in the KVO-compliant ways, which may cause the data in your views to become stale.) For pretty much anything else, you need to roll your own model class.

The point that I learned is that you must have exactly one array of model objects (whatever their class)—no more.

And if you feel there is a need for a simple tableview and bindings example in the Cocoa Bindings documentation file a bug now if you can.

mmalc has multiple examples. The problem that I had was that no documentation that I've seen has emphasized the importance of exactly one array of model objects.

I probably should file a bug about that, once I pin down a good place for Apple to put such a statement.

No, there is nothing special about an array of strings failing. an array of any simple object type will fail. You need to have an array of model objects that support attributes. From there you can delete all the extra stuff array/arraycontrollers. I figured once you got over the hump of not being able to use simple arrays, you'd get there. :-)

And if you feel there is a need for a simple tableview and bindings example in the Cocoa Bindings documentation file a bug _now_ if you can.