OSX Menu Mystery

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Fri Mar 11 17:39:31 EST 2005


graham samuel wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 09:16:14 -0800, Richard Gaskin 
> <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:
> 
>> Actually, the Help menu must meet two criteria:  for Windows it needs to
>> be the right-most menu since that's where folks expect to find it, but
>> for Mac is must be the last item in your menu group since the engine
>> builds the Mac menu bar from menu contents according to their later
>> order within the group.
> 
> Sorry to be dumb but I don't quite understand this sentence - what's the 
> difference between 'right-most' and 'last in group' - could a menu be 
> one and not the other?

If you were being "clever" like I was once, you might clone a menu 
within your group to make a new one, and wind up with something like this:

   File  Edit  View  Help

...but the layer order might be:

1. File
2. Edit
4. View
3. Help

In such a case the engine will put them into the Mac menu bar as:

  File Edit Help View Help

..since OS X always has a Help menu as the last one.

>> I was going to add my notes there, but I couldn't find the section you
>> refer to.  Where's the best place for me to add them?
>
> The only reference I could find was in Topics/Menus, where there is a 
> question:
> 
>  How do I respond to quitting an OS X application?
> 
> In truth this does not cover the topic of menu items being moved around 
> automagically without the developer really being able to intervene, so 
> we need a new topic - which perhaps contains the existing one - called 
> something like:
> 
> How do I make sure my menus operate correctly under OSX?

I'll drop it in the first one for now, and agree that it would be good 
to see the latter some time. Thanks.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  __________________________________________________
  Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev


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