Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!elcond
From: elcond@garnet.berkeley.edu (Gregory Dow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Pull down menus.
Message-ID: <7398@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 5 Mar 88 10:07:55 GMT
References: <4129@hoptoad.uucp> <283@rhesus.primate.wisc.edu> <1710@ssc-vax.UUCP> <3996@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> <730@nuchat.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: elcond@garnet.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Gregory Dow)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 36

In article <730@nuchat.UUCP> peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes:
>If nothing else, Apple has earned a big black mark for pull-down menus. Due
>to the Mac's popularity (due, in turn, to being the first kid on the block
>with affordable windows) *everyone* has been copying those stupid menus.
>Atari even emulates Apple's one-button paradigm on their 2-button mouse.

Pull-down menus are fine on the original, small Mac screen, but can be
a pain with a large and/or mulitple monitor set up.  Tear-off menus
(for those who asked, these are menus that you can pull down and then
drag around and place anywhere on the screen) are great, but really
effective only for one or two menus at a time.  Having 6 or so menus
floating around at once gets confusing and takes up valuable screen space.

I've been thinking about an extension to the standard Mac interface where
a multiple-button mouse is simulated using modifier keys.  I propose that
option-clicking (or control-clicking) should display a hierarchical popup menu
of the titles in the menu bar.  For example, in a simple program with just
an Apple, File, and Edit menu, you would get the following:

			-------------
			| A       > |
			| File    > |
			| Edit    > |
			-------------

This menu would popup next to the mouse location and behave as a normal
hierarchical menu.

What do people think about this idea?  If there's interest, I can post
some source code showing how implement this is in an application.
I haven't quite figured out how to implement this as an
INIT or cdev so that it will work with existing executable programs.

  Gregory Dow			ARPA:   elcond@garnet.berkeley.edu
  Chemical Engineering Dept.	UUCP:   {uwvax, decvax, ihnp4, ...}!ucbvax
  University of California	          !elcond%garnet.berkeley.edu
  Berkeley, CA  94720		BITNET: POLYDOW@UCBCMSA