Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!efi!tim
From: tim@efi.com (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Menu items that change
Message-ID: <1990Jul23.203212.2288@efi.com>
Date: 23 Jul 90 20:32:12 GMT
References: <8997@goofy.Apple.COM> <23058@dartvax.Dartmouth. <1990Jul9.233133.7372@efi.com> <1178@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
Organization: Electronics For Imaging, Inc.
Lines: 27

In article <1990Jul9.233133.7372@efi.com> tim@efi.com (Tim Maroney) writes:
>>Menu items should very rarely vary.  HyperCard is one of the worst
>>offenders, with respect to menu items like "Import Paint".  

In article <1178@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> sthomas@library.adelaide.edu.au
(Steve Thomas) writes:
>I don't see any way around this for Hypercard: there's just not enough room in
>a standard menu bar for all the Hypercard menus at once. In any case, I would
>far rather see only options of relevance at any one time, even at the 'risk'
>of having menus change. 

I don't have a lot of problems with having *menus* change.  That's a
clearly visible and natural feedback mechanism.  There's nothing
deceptive about it.  It's when *items* change in the existing menus that
I have problems.  Note the example -- "Import Paint".  It makes sense
to me to have the menus change to reflect whole new ranges of options
that come into play in a permissible modality, such as selecting a
paint tool.  You can easily see that this has happened, without doing
anything, because the appearance of the screen changes.  Not so with
menu *item* changes, which are buried and unobvious.

>There's no point handing me a box of nails when I'm holding a screwdriver.

Then again, saying you have to be holding the screwdriver to paint the
walls doesn't make a whole lot of sense either, and this is just what
happens when Hypercard demands that you select a graphics tool before
letting you "Import Paint".