Using menus
You can use menus in two ways:
- Place them in the
menu bar of a window - Display a menu as a pop-up menu
Adding a menu bar to a window
To have a menu bar display when a window is opened by a user,
you associate a menu with the window in the Window painter.
To associate a menu with a window:
-
Click the Open button in the PowerBar,
select the window with which you want to associate the menu, and
open the window. -
Do one of the following:
- In
the Properties view for the window, enter the name of the menu in the
MenuName text box on the General tab page. - Click the Browse button and select the menu from
the Select Object dialog box, which lists all menus available to
the application.
In the Select Object dialog box, you can search for a menu
by clicking the Browse button.
- In
-
Click Save to associate the selected menu with
the window.
Identifying menu items in window scripts
You reference menu items in scripts in windows and controls
using the following syntax:
|
1 |
<i>menu.menu item</i> |
You must always fully qualify the menu item with the name
of the menu.
When referring to a menu item in a drop-down or cascading
menu, you must specify each menu item on the path to the menu item
you are referencing, separating the names with periods.
For example, to refer to the Enabled property of menu item m_open,
which is under the menu bar item m_file in
the menu saved in the library as m_menu,
use:
|
1 |
m_menu.m_file.m_open.Enabled |
Changing a window’s menu during execution
You can use the ChangeMenu function in
a script to change the menu associated with a window during execution.
Displaying pop-up menus
To display a pop-up menu in a window, use the PopMenu function
to identify the menu and the location at which you want to display
the menu.
If the menu is associated with the window
If the menu is currently associated with the window, you can
simply call the PopMenu function.
The following statement in a CommandButton script displays m_appl.m_help as
a pop-up menu at the current pointer position, assuming menu m_appl is already
associated with the window:
|
1 |
m_appl.m_help.PopMenu(PointerX(), PointerY()) |
If the menu is not associated with the window
If the menu is not already associated with the window, you
must create an instance of the menu before you can display it as
a pop-up menu.
The following statements create an instance of the menu m_new,
then pop up the menu mymenu.m_file at
the pointer location, assuming m_new is
not associated with the window containing the script:
|
1 |
m_new mymenu<br />mymenu = create m_new<br />mymenu.m_file.PopMenu(PointerX(), PointerY()) |