OS X Menu Problem

[Jan Schenkel]

--- Stewart Lynch <slynch at richmond.sd38.bc.ca> wrote:
> I am having real difficulty with creating Menus on
> OS X.
> For example, I have a File Menu that has a Save as
> one of the menu
> options.  When I view the menu in the form, all menu
> options are
> displayed.  When I view it as an OS X Menu, the menu
> item is not there.
> 
> In other instances, entire menus do not display in
> the OS X IDE nor when
> the application is built as a stand alone.
> 
> Is there any solution to this?  The Menu Builder is
> flakey at best.
> 

Hi Stewart,

Revolution may have its peculiarities regarding menus,
but usually because it's trying to make things easy
for cross-platform developers.
One of the things it does behind the scene, is place
the last two items of the 'File' menu into the
'Application' menu.
Is it possible that the last two items of your 'File'
menu aren't a separator line and 'Quit' ?

For more information regarding menus, go to the
documentation, in the section 'About... menus and the
menubar'
Here's the relevant quote from this section:

--

Special menu items
A few menu items on Mac OS and OS X are handled
directly by the operating system. To accommodate these
special menu items while allowing you to create a
fully cross-platform menu bar, Revolution treats the
last two menu items of the Help menu (for Mac OS and
OS X), the File menu (OS X), and the Edit menu (OS X)
differently.

By following these guidelines, you can make sure your
menus will appear properly on all operating systems
without having to write special code or create
platform-specific menu bars.

The Help menu and the “About This
Application” menu item:
When Revolution sets up the Mac OS menu bar, it
automatically makes the last button the Help menu
(regardless of the button’s name). The standard
Help menu items, such as “About Balloon
Help” and “Show Balloons” on Mac OS,
are included for you automatically; you don’t
need to include them in your Help menu button, and you
can’t eliminate them from the Help menu.

Revolution moves the last menu item in the Help menu
to the “About This Application” position.
(On Mac OS systems, this is the first menu item in the
Apple menu. On OS X systems, it’s the first menu
item in the Application menu.) Therefore, the last
menu item in your Help menu button should be an
appropriate “About” item. The menu item
above it must be a divider line (a dash), and above
that must be at least one menu item to be placed in
the Help menu.

The File menu and the “Quit” menu item:
On OS X systems, the “Quit” menu item is
normally placed in the Application menu (which is
maintained by the operating system) rather than in the
File menu as is standard on other platforms. To
acccommodate this user-interface standard, Revolution
removes the last two menu items of the File menu when
a standalone application is running on an OS X system.
Therefore, the last menu item in your File menu button
should be “Quit”. The menu item above it
should be a divider line (a dash).

The Edit menu and the “Preferences” menu
item:
On OS X systems, the “Preferences” menu item
is also normally placed in the Application menu. To
acccommodate this user-interface standard, Revolution
removes the last two menu items of the Edit menu when
a standalone application is running on an OS X system.
Therefore, the last menu item in your Edit menu button
should be “Preferences”. The menu item above
it should be a divider line (a dash).

  Note:  The Preferences menu item is treated in this
special way only if its name starts with the string
“Preferences”.

  Tip:  If your application’s user interface is
presented in a language other than English, set the
name of the Edit menu button to “Edit”, and
set its label to the correct translation. This ensures
that the engine can find the Edit menu, while making
sure that the menu is shown in the correct language.

Choosing the special menu items:
When the user chooses any of these special menu items,
a menuPick message is sent to the button that the menu
item is contained in. This ensures that your button
scripts will work on all platforms, even if Revolution
displays a menu item in a different menu to comply
with user-interface guidelines.

For example, if the user chooses “About This
Application” from the Apple menu on a Mac OS
system, a menuPick message is sent to the Help menu
button, with “About This Application” as its
parameter. You handle the message for the About menu
item in the Help menu button’s script, even
though Revolution displays this menu item in a
different menu on the Mac.

--

As for any other problems with menus that aren't
covered in these docs : if you would post a sample
stack on the web somewhere, I'm sure these can be
resolved as well.

Hope this helped,

Jan Schenkel.

=====
"As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)

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