System menubar (on right) on Mac

Kay C Lan lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com
Fri May 23 03:16:17 EDT 2014


On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Bill Vlahos <bvlahos at mac.com> wrote:
> I want to enable the user to hilite any text on the screen go to that menu item and capture the hilited text for my program.

This sounds more like a job for a 'Service' - which is what other
developers do. Your biggest problem is that most Mac users are unaware
that such Services exist. Unlike your solution, which would be
available even when text is not selected, Services are contextual and
therefore only appear at the appropriate moment. On my Mac when I open
any semi-text document (Reminders, Preview, iPhoto, or non-Apple;
BBEdit, Valentina Studio, Delicious Library...) and select nothing
there are NO Services available, but as soon as I select text then 8
Services become available including 'Append Selection to BBEdit
Scratchpad' and 'New BBEdit Document with Selection' - sounds similar
to what you are trying to achieve.

You can easily create your own Services using a combination of
Automator, AppleScript and Shell commands. This article might help,
but you can easily google others:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/03/howto-build-mac-os-x-services-with-automator-and-shell-scripting/

It's a pitty the LC IDE itself doesn't come with any Services of it's
own as it would be a good starting point to plagiarise.

HTH




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