biggers@DG-RTP.DG.COM (Mark Biggers) (06/16/88)
> I have written a toolkit with pull-down menus which takes a different > approach: the menu is a single window and I track button motion events > to detect when the pointer enters/leaves an item. Highlighting feedback > is not slower than with other strategies, and the menus pop up much > faster, even though I never keep any unmapped windows; I just create and > destroy the menu's window as needed. Anyone care to comment? > -- > Guido van Rossum, Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) I am curious; would your menu system, as currently implemented, handle the menu interaction style of: click to bring up menus, traverse the menu items, then click on an item. The menu then disappears. Since you track *button* motion events, apparently your system requires that the menu button be held down to bring up the menus, traverse and then select by releasing the button on the item. Have you tried the RTLmenu package? It is pretty zingy when popping up and traversing the menu items. I like the idea of conserving memory with single-window menus, however. I am not sure a Sun 3/50 should be seen as a canonical system. I now run mostly Andrew tools and GNU Emacs, along with the cwm tiling window manager on my 3/50; I am just praying for Clearpoint to release a memory board for this starved machine. With the frame buffer, UNIX and X window server taking 3/4 of physical memory, everytime I switch to another application, I get to take a break while the machine pages :^( :^( :^(. ============================================= Mark Biggers, a.k.a. biggers@dg-rtp.dg.com Data General 62 Alexander Drive Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 (919) 248-6201
guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum) (06/21/88)
In article <8806161258.AA00564@peewee.ux_kernel.com> <biggers@dg-rtp.dg.com> writes: >I am curious; would your menu system, as currently implemented, handle >the menu interaction style of: click to bring up menus, traverse the >menu items, then click on an item. The menu then disappears. > >Since you track *button* motion events, apparently your system >requires that the menu button be held down to bring up the menus, >traverse and then select by releasing the button on the item. I don't do this at the moment (I'm sticking dangerously close to the Macintosh design), but wouldn't it be possible by tracking pointer motion events while the menu window is popped up, possibly in combination with grabbing the mouse? (Uhh, I don't even know off-hand whether it's possible to do an active grab with no mouse buttons down.) Or, alternatively, if I don't need to provide highlighting feedback while no buttons are down, it would be even simpler (just don't unmap the window at the first button-up). I haven't tried the RTL menu package. My ideal menu package should have a way to turn a pop-up menu into a (temporary) static menu, e.g., by double-clicking on the title bar or some modifier-key. With the current state-of-the-art slow cheap workstations (aka VS2K) popping up the same menu to change three options is really tedious. -- Guido van Rossum, Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Amsterdam guido@piring.cwi.nl or mcvax!piring!guido or guido%piring.cwi.nl@uunet.uu.net