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Is there a pull-right hierarchical menu in Squeak?

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Stephen Pope

Is there a pull-right hierarchical menu in Squeak?

Hi all,

The title says it all; my app (Siren) uses hierarchical menus extensively
(see the attached screen shot for an example), and I'd rather not have them
be many-click menus as in Squeak.

Is there an implementation of true hierarchical/pull-right menus in Squeak
or any of its descendants (I'm using Cuis).

stp

<http://forum.world.st/file/t9553/h-menu.jpg>

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Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Squeak-Dev-f45488.html

timrowledge

Re: Is there a pull-right hierarchical menu in Squeak?

On 2020-05-31, at 2:49 PM, Stephen Pope <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi all,

The title says it all; my app (Siren) uses hierarchical menus extensively
(see the attached screen shot for an example), and I'd rather not have them
be many-click menus as in Squeak.

Is there an implementation of true hierarchical/pull-right menus in Squeak
or any of its descendants (I'm using Cuis).

You mean like this -

That's a DockingBarMenuMorph but it's just a child of MenuMorph. I think one simply uses #add:subMenu:

Oddly enough I was talking to some other folk about Siren just last week...

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Kept an open mind -- and his brains fell out.

marcel.taeumel

Re: Is there a pull-right hierarchical menu in Squeak?

Hi Stephen.

Sub-menus will behave as expected. :-) To create something like what Tim showed, you can use this interface:

MenuMorph >> #add:subMenu:

If you want to write menu-construction code that should (eventually) work in Squeak's Morphic and MVC, you should use this interface:

MenuMorph >> #add:subMenu:target:selector:argumentList:

CustomMenu >> #add:subMenu:target:selector:argumentList:

If you are using ToolBuilder directly to construct menus (i.e. PluggableMenuSpec), there is -- unfortunately -- no way to add sub-menus. However, almost all tools that go through ToolBuilder construct their menus via a callback from the actual widgets (e.g., PluggableListMorph in Morphic, PluggableListView in MVC), which then arrives as "someMenu" in your model's menu-construction method. That "someMenu" will then be a MenuMorph (in Morphic) or CustomMenu (in MVC). See above for that case. :-)

That latter, most frequent way, to construct menus does not add sub-menus but this .... very special ;-) ... "more..." menu item at the end of the list.

Best,

Marcel

Am 01.06.2020 00:25:54 schrieb tim Rowledge <[hidden email]>:

On 2020-05-31, at 2:49 PM, Stephen Pope <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi all,

The title says it all; my app (Siren) uses hierarchical menus extensively
(see the attached screen shot for an example), and I'd rather not have them
be many-click menus as in Squeak.

Is there an implementation of true hierarchical/pull-right menus in Squeak
or any of its descendants (I'm using Cuis).

You mean like this -

That's a DockingBarMenuMorph but it's just a child of MenuMorph. I think one simply uses #add:subMenu:

Oddly enough I was talking to some other folk about Siren just last week...

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Kept an open mind -- and his brains fell out.

timrowledge

Re: Is there a pull-right hierarchical menu in Squeak?

> On 2020-05-31, at 11:53 PM, Marcel Taeumel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> If you are using ToolBuilder directly to construct menus (i.e. PluggableMenuSpec), there is -- unfortunately -- no way to add sub-menus. However, almost all tools that go through ToolBuilder construct their menus via a callback from the actual widgets (e.g., PluggableListMorph in Morphic, PluggableListView in MVC), which then arrives as "someMenu" in your model's menu-construction method. That "someMenu" will then be a MenuMorph (in Morphic) or CustomMenu (in MVC). See above for that case. :-)

On my list of things to attack one day is cleaning up the horrendous mess of menu building via toolbuilder. Maybe by the time I get to it somebody else will have solved it for me.
>
> That latter, most frequent way, to construct menus does not add sub-menus but this .... very special ;-) ... "more..." menu item at the end of the list.

... which is possibly the nastiest way one could do it. If you have to have menus with more than ~9 items, a well thought out hierarchical menu is the least awful approach. If you arrange for it to work well then it is possible to make even complex hierarchies seem natural; see for example, how RISC OS does the job.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
C for sinking, java for drinking, Smalltalk for thinking

Christoph Thiede

Re: Is there a pull-right hierarchical menu in Squeak?

> On my list of things to attack one day is cleaning up the horrendous mess of menu building via toolbuilder. Maybe by the time I get to it somebody else will have solved it for me.

I'm currently working at a new PluggableMenuButtonMorph where I am dealing with similar design decisions in the ToolBuilder. Let's exchange some ideas before we start reinventing the same wheel from different sides. :-)

Von: Squeak-dev <[hidden email]> im Auftrag von tim Rowledge <[hidden email]>
Gesendet: Montag, 1. Juni 2020 20:04:16
An: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
Betreff: Re: [squeak-dev] Is there a pull-right hierarchical menu in Squeak?

Carpe Squeak!