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From: jan@echo.canberra.edu.au (Jan Newmarch)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.motif
Subject: Re: MenuBar question
Message-ID: <9010170505.AA00804@golf.canberra.edu.au>
Date: 17 Oct 90 20:05:21 GMT
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ellis@osf.org writes
> 
> > I wonder if it is legal to construct a Motif menubar such that some of
> > the cascade buttons don't have any pulldown menu and command button(s)
> > as children? 
> 
> The Motif Style Guide requires that a menu bar may only be populated with
> cascade buttons.
> 
>   -- Ellis

 I think this needs some more clarification from an OSF Style guru as
to what you can or should do. You can only put a cascade button in a
menu bar. Fine - it is a homogenous widget, so no problem.
But from Motif style guide (Motif 1.0) paraphrased: menus have titles
(section 7.2.1), so what appears in the cascade button with a menu must 
be its title. In section 5.1.1 'commands are not included as topics in
the menu bar because they would prohibit browsing the menu topics'. And 
that's it! This last bit seems to be odd: I don't know what a command
is. It certainly isn't just a cascade without a menu but with a callback,
because you can browse them with the mouse quite happily.

Kee Hinckley suggested that I should avoid this by having a `dummy'
title:
        ----------------
        | File | foo   |
        ----------------
               | Toggle|
               ---------
but that just looks odd. His desire for a `default' menu selection
may also break the rule where clicking on a menu title enables keyboard
traversal.

I tried the Common User Access Advanced Interface Guide and that told
me nothing.

I asked one of my Microsoft Windows programming colleagues and got this:
If the button has a submenu, the button gives its title. If it invokes
a dialog, it should be followed by ellipses `...'. If it is a single command,
follow it with a `!'. e.g.
        ---------------------------
        | File | Toggle! | Help... |
        ---------------------------
As an example he showed me `shaker'  from the Microsoft Application
developers Toolkit using exactly these conventions. Microsoft appears
quite happy about buttons without submenus. (In passing, at least one of
the Motif examples (xmfonts?) breaks the `...' style.m)

Before we spend too much time worrying about whether some aspects of
keyboard traversal or the number of mouse clicks required are bugs
or features, could someone from OSF (or elsewhere) tell us what  is good,
bad or recommended, please.

+----------------------+---+
  Jan Newmarch, Information Science and Engineering,
  University of Canberra, PO Box 1, Belconnen, Act 2616
  Australia. Tel: (Aust) 6-2522422. Fax: (Aust) 6-2522999

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+--------------------------+