System menus

[James Spencer]

On Feb 20, 2006, at 10:10 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

>> As already said, Rev does not provide such facilities so this is  
>> getting off-topic but the info here is not really correct.  While  
>> it is true that there is no Apple sanctioned API for specifically  
>> "Menu Bar Extras" as referred to in the HIG material quoted above,  
>> Cocoa does provide an Apple sanctioned public API for the creation  
>> of "Status Items" (NSStatusItem).  These are sort of weaker Menu  
>> Bar Extras (weaker in that the underlying application needs to be  
>> running for them to appear and you can't reorder them like you can  
>> Extras) but they are there regardless of which app is in front and  
>> they have the advantage that they can't bring the system down  
>> either.  While a public API, Apple still discourages their use  
>> unless there is no alternative (say a Dock menu), ostensibly to  
>> save menu bar real estate.  (I think it's also to avoid creating  
>> the nightmare of a Windows system tray.)
>> The point is that not every third party program that is putting up  
>> one of these menus is "hacking" the system.  I don't like these  
>> things so I don't have many up there but I note that Kensington's  
>> MouseWorks uses status items, not menu bar extras.  The only way I  
>> could tell (short of looking at what processes are running) was to  
>> try to Cmd-drag the icon.
>
> Thanks for the clarification, James.
>
> As long as Apple's backtracked from their original position, maybe  
> a Bugzilla request is in order?

It's hard to know how far Apple has backtracked: I get the sense that  
there is some internal differences.  The HIG quote you gave is still  
very much valid showing a last update date of 2006-02-07 obviously  
long after NSStatusItem was made available (I think in OS X 10.1).

Not that I think Rev should be artificially limited so as to act as a  
"big brother" in complying with good practices, I'm not convinced  
that this deserves a bugzilla request; IMHO even Status Items should  
be limited to hardware based stuff, system level programming that,  
again IMHO, Rev is not really suited for.  Now dock menus on the  
other hand....

James P. Spencer
Rochester, MN

jspencer78 at mac.com

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