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From: jackiw@cs.swarthmore.edu (Nick Jackiw)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: New HIG for pull-down/pop-ups
Message-ID: <5J2NCPB@cs.swarthmore.edu>
Date: 15 Aug 90 13:43:26 GMT
Sender: jackiw@cs.swarthmore.edu (Nick Jackiw)
Organization: Visual Geometry Project, Swarthmore College, PA
Lines: 31


Has anyone noticed the rather poorly thought out logic of the new 
guidelines for pull-down menus? They insist that you append a "scroll-down"
arrow (a la any scrolling menu) after the menu item currently listed in
the default box, e. g. 

                  +--------------+
            Font: | Palantino   V|
                  +--------------+

Where V is the scrolldown arrow.  Now either your default popup rect is
is wider (by scrollarrow-width) than your widest item, or it's not. In
the later case, if one of your menu's wider items is chosen, you'll have
to truncate it to make room for the arrow--ugh!  In the former case, though,
if the user clicks on the scroll-down arrow (a common choice, I think) then
the menu pops up, but is off to the left 20 or 30 pixels from where the
cursor is located (so no item is initially hilited...again, ugh!).

This seems poorly thought out, to me.  While I suppose you could force the
menus to be wider--adding scrollarrow-width to the result of CalcMenuSize--
there's no clean way to do this, and it would give you a pop-up with an
oddly-blank right margin.

I think I liked the old method better.  Grumble grumble...


-- 
------------------------
Nick Jackiw		jackiw@cs.swarthmore.edu  "Just break out the
Visual Geometry Project	jackiw@swarthmr.bitnet     rum so we seem natural!"
Swarthmore College, PA 19081-1397				-F. Franklin