Menu manager/switch problem

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Wed Mar 12 18:03:01 EST 2003


Ken Norris wrote:

>> You are thinking too Mac-centric. No other platform moves its About menu
>> around like the Mac. Everywhere else, the About is under the Help menu.
>> It is a convenience that Revolution transparently handles the various
>> positions of the Macintosh About menu for you, since the position is
>> different even between OS 9 and OS X. By placing the About item under
>> the Help menu, your stack will display properly on any OS and you won't
>> ever have to think about it.
> ----------
> It's just that there is nothing in the docs to tell us this is what happens,
> so I wasn't expecting it. There's probably other stuff like that, too. I'm
> looking for that list.

I remember how hard it was for me to learn SuperCard when I came from a
background in HyperCard, and years later how hard Ken, Christopher Watson,
and myself worked to deliver one of the most comprehensive sets of docs for
an authoring tool ever at the time, only to find how hard it was even after
we delivered them for folks to readily find everything they needed.  With
complex systems like authoring tools, experience is the best teacher.

Since I came into Rev from MetaCard years before, I'm less familiar with
Rev's docs, but generally find them far better than MC's, and roughly on par
with SuperCard's (there's a great many more tokens to document in Rev, so
the Rev docs have generally more stuff overall).

Knowing Jeanne's thoroughness (it was, after all, her HyperCard book that we
used as the inspiration for form and breadth when we rewote SuperCard's
docs), I took a look in the docs to see what I could find on this subject.

Here's what I did:

1. In Rev's menu bar, I chose Help->Revolution Documentation

2. In the list on the front card of that stack, I chose "Menus", which
brings up a list of topics on the right.  In that list, assuming I had no
experience with Rev, I simply chose the first item, "About...menus and the
menu bar", thinking it might provide a good overview from which I could
explore other details as needed.

3. In that section is a subsection titled "Menu Bars on Mac OS and OS X
Systems", which describes the behavior in question, with more detail and
more concisely than even the discussion here on this list.


Ken and I once had the pleasure of working under the same manager, a man of
impecible character and unusual insight.  I found myself frustrated with
learning Gain Momentum, since it was not only a larger and more complex
xTalk than I'd known before (20 volumes of manuals stacked three feet high),
but it also required me to learn Unix at the same time.  It was a lot to
bite off at once, and after coming from years of solid SuperCard mastery I
was frustrated with finding myself nearly completely ignorant, starting at
the very bottom of the learning curve all over again.  I took my concerns to
my manager, and here's what he told me:

   If you plant a seed today and pour ten thousand gallons of water
   on it, you still won't have a tree tommorrow.

Some things simply take time and patience, and learning is definitely more
of a process than an event.  This is especially difficult when coming from
another tool, and compounded when that tool rests in the relative comfort of
a single operating system:  For years you've grown into a comfortable
mastery of the tool, and over time the "learning muscle" in some respects
atrophies.  

Observing myself with both learning new tools and with physical therapy
after a hiking accident last year, I know how hard it is to reverse atrophy.
But as my physical therapist reminded me, "movement begets movement":  every
small effort made in a direction of growth has a compounded effect over
time.  Initially there are few measurable results, and such work begins as
an act of faith and will.  But over time, with the encouragement of others
who've crossed that mountain before you, you have to trust that it's
achievable.  And after a while your results will provide all the
encouragement you'll need, and may even serve to inspire others as they
begin the same path.

So please be patient with yourself, and try to be patient with the docs.
They're not perfect, but frankly they are among the most comprehensive
you'll find, even when compared to the big publishers like Adobe and
Macromedia.

In nearly evry case, I'll stake my reputation on the assertion that the
topic is covered in Jeanne's docs.  And for those few cases where a topic is
not in a clear place or even more rare, not covered at all, a brief note to
her will see it corrected as soon as possible, and a note to this list will
put you on the right track immediately.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge 2.2: Publish any database on any site
 ___________________________________________________________
 Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com
 Tel: 323-225-3717                       AIM: FourthWorldInc




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