Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Toolbox Essentials /

Chapter 3 - Menu Manager

Using the Menu Manager

You can define your application's menus and menu bar as resources and use Menu Manager routines to create and manage them. For example, whenever the user presses the mouse button while the cursor is in the menu bar, your application should call the MenuSelect function, allowing the user to choose a command from any menu. The MenuSelect function handles all user activity until the user releases the mouse button. The MenuSelect function displays and removes menus as the user drags the cursor through the menu bar, and it highlights enabled menu items as the user drags through
a menu.

You should provide help balloons for each menu title and menu item of your application. You store information and text for help balloons in resources. See the chapter
"Help Manager" in Inside Macintosh: More Macintosh Toolbox for complete and specific
information on how to provide help balloons for the menus of your application. The
BalloonWriter application, available from APDA, can also help you create help balloons for the menus of your application.

Your application needs to initialize QuickDraw, the Font Manager, and the Window Manager before using the Menu Manager. Your application can accomplish this using the InitGraf, InitFonts, and InitWindows procedures. To initialize the Menu Manager, use the InitMenus procedure.

If your application uses pop-up menus, use the Gestalt function with the gestaltPopUpAttr selector to determine if the control definition function for
pop-up menus is available. See Inside Macintosh: Operating System Utilities for information about the Gestalt function.

To create the pull-down menus in your application's menu bar, you need to

• create descriptions of each pull-down menu in 'MENU' resources
• create an 'MBAR' resource that lists the order and resource ID of each menu
• use the GetNewMBar function and SetMenuBar procedure to set up your menu bar and use the DrawMenuBar procedure to draw your menu bar

The next section, "Creating a Menu," explains these steps in detail.

After creating your application's menu bar, you can enable or disable your menu items, add marks such as checkmarks or dashes to menu items, or add items to any of your menus as needed. See "Enabling and Disabling Menu Items" on page 3-59, "Changing the Mark of Menu Items" on page 3-63, and "Adding Items to a Menu" beginning on page 3-66 for information on these topics.

"Handling User Choice of a Menu Command," beginning on page 3-72, shows how to handle mouse-down events in the menu bar, adjust the menus of your application, and determine if the user chose a keyboard equivalent of a command.

"Responding When the User Chooses a Menu Item," beginning on page 3-80, describes how your application should respond once the user chooses an item and also shows how to handle the user's choice of a command from the Apple and Help menus.

If your application displays dialog boxes, see "Accessing Menus From a Dialog Box" beginning on page 3-86.

Finally, if your application needs to create submenus or pop-up menus, see "Creating a Hierarchical Menu" on page 3-55 and "Creating a Pop-Up Menu" on page 3-58.

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Subtopics

Creating a Menu

Creating a Hierarchical Menu

Creating a Pop-Up Menu

Changing the Appearance of Items in a Menu

Adding Items to a Menu

Handling User Choice of a Menu Command

Responding When the User Chooses a Menu Item

Accessing Menus From a Dialog Box

Writing Your Own Menu Definition Procedure