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From: doug@hparc0.HP.COM (Doug Parsons)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: New version of Usher to be released (soon)!
Message-ID: <2770010@hparc0.HP.COM>
Date: 18 Jan 91 03:25:48 GMT
References: <1991Jan16.222658.4806@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Organization: HP Australasian Response Centre (Melbourne)
Lines: 42

Hi George.

Just tried USHER and it seems to be what I'm looking for.  
I normally use unix X11/windows and our implementation has the
same idea for the menus.

I noticed that you'v posted a note saying that you will be updating
USHER with enhancements.  One thing that our x11 windows menu can do
that you may want to include is seperate menus for each button.
Normally, our users have the left button loaded with applications, te
right button loaded with utilities, and the middle button (or both together)
loaded with major functions like exit, refresh, and re-init.  This could be
a good place to put the About... and time/date stamp.

The way that our menu works when it is near an edge is slightly different.
Not necessarily better, mind you, but different:  If you bring up the menu
when it is close to the right edge of the screen, the menu and all submenus
will align to the righthand edge (ie. overlap one another).  I've found it
confusing to the eyes when the sub menus jump to the left on USHER.

One anomaly I noted was that the win.ini entries for load= and run= were
not being executed when I ran USHER as a shell.  The reason came to me when
I was watching the Gulf news last night (strange where the mind wanders in
times of duress): I keep my windows programs in a sub-directory called PROGRAMS
and reference the files in it thus:  load= programs/MYPROG.EXE  programs/ABC.EXE

When I changed them to be   load=c:\windows\programs\myprog.exe  then USHER
loaded them correctly.  I suppose that Windows/3 is looking for the files
relative to the Windows3 directory, whereas USHER is looking for them relative
to the directory where WIN is issued (the root, normally).

Oh - a good reason to add the multiple menu functionality (left, right, and 
middle/both) would be to get rid of the competition.  It's too confusing/
complex/frustrating to have 2 programs doing one job.

Hope this helps.  I'll send my s/w money as soon as I can get some 
converted (I'm in Australia).

Doug Parsons,
Hewlett Packard Australia

[standard disclaimer]