modal dialogs and Quit problem

[Alex Rice]

On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 10:02  PM, Barry Levine wrote:
> Now, someone wrote (and I don't remember who) that it's the 
> developer's responsibility to disable the Quit menu item. Fair enough. 
> Show me how that can be done in OSX and I'll have a workaround.

re: disabling the Quit menu item.

(that was me) Sorry, "disable menu" is not working for the App's menu. 
Menu 1 is apparently mapped to the menu after the App's menu; the File 
menu. Menu "appName" doesn't exist. Docs say: "On Mac OS systems, the 
Apple menu does not have a number and cannot be enabled or disabled. 
Menu numbering starts with the menu to the right of the Apple menu." On 
OS X the menu item after the Apple menu is the application menu. 
runrev: Is this a docs bug, or an engine bug? In either case, one 
cannot disable the Quit menu item.

IMHO sneakily moving menu items (quit, preferences) from other menus to 
the Application menu really seems like a poor solution. We need full 
control over the App menu on OS X. In Apple's Project Builder, the App 
menu is fully editable and is no different than other menus in terms of 
creation and event handling. I'm sure the current behavior of Rev is in 
the interest of making menu objects cross-platform. This seems like 
feature request material.

re: replicating your problem report

I made a new stack and set it's menu bar as the mac os menu bar, 
causing the Quit menu item to be moved from the File menu into the 
App's menu. Built standalone. Here are my findings:

  1 - during an "answer file", the the quit menu item IS disabled. It's 
OK after all.
  2 - during an "answer info", the the quit menu item is *enabled*. 
that's not good because it does also send a shutdownRequest message. 
this should be bugzilla'd. (maybe covered in your bug report?)
  3 - shutdownRequest always got sent. couldn't replicate that bug.
  4 - didn't look at any other modal dialogs

re: miserable workaround for problem 2

hide menubar
answer info "..." -- or other modal dialog
show menubar

re: possible other workaround for problem 2

shutdownRequest is also coincident with an apple event that's described 
in the docs. I would check to make sure that the apple event has the 
same bug as the shutdownRequest (gets sent during modal dialog). If the 
apple event for some reason doesn't suffer the same bug then that opens 
up a better workaround possibility.

You seem to have found at least 2 bugs here Barry!  It's hard to tell 
because of the connection between the Quit menu item and the 
shutdownRequest message + apple event message. Anyone know how we can 
we look into that connection and see how it's implemented? is it 
transcript or part of the OS X engine?

I learned a lot about Rev menus tonight- thanks!

Alex Rice <alex at mindlube.com> | Mindlube Software | http://mindlube.com

what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco