Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Hierarchical menus -- drag delay found, and it's weird
Message-ID: <10164@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 10 Feb 90 21:43:13 GMT
References: <14044@reed.UUCP> <1990Feb5.004034.6097@oracle.com> <28018@brunix.UUCP> <10059@hoptoad.uucp> <2857@draken.nada.kth.se> <1807@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 40

In article <1807@milton.acs.washington.edu> phaedrus@milton.acs.washington.edu
(The Wanderer) writes:
>In article <10059@hoptoad.uucp>, tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) points out the
>problems with hierarchical menus going away if you deviate from the narrow
>drag path from the main menu to the hierarchical one, and how there's no
>obvious way to patch for this because it's all internal to MenuSelect.
>
>In article <2857@draken.nada.htk.se> d88-jwa@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) points
>out that IM documents that there is a hierarchical-menu popup delay and drag
>delay documented, but their locations are not.
>
>     I've seen a CDEV that governs this exact thing (called MenuDrag, or
>MenuSelect, or something like that).  There is indeed a popup and a drag
>delay for hierarchical menus; their values are stored in the PRAM (the
>extended area, I believe, so you'd have to use the xPRAM INIT to make changes
>stick on a Plus).  I have no idea what the specific location is, however
>(I'm at work and don't have my Mac or my IM manuals handy...)  Check the
>ftp sites for the CDEV, and check the IM documentation of the PRAM bytes for
>the exact location.

No, there's nothing about parameter RAM in Inside Mac volume V, and it
also seems strange to me that Apple would put something in parameter
RAM without giving users a way to set it from the Control Panel.

However, this got me to thinking -- what if they're using the menu
flash setting as the drag delay?  So, I just tested it, and it appears
this is the case.  I can drag to a submenu at a leisurely speed with
the menu flash set to 1, but I have to jerk my hand at setting 3; and 3
was my previous setting.  This explains why I was having problems.

It doesn't explain why the implementors thought there would be an
inverse relationship between the number of times a user wants the menus
to flash and the amount of drag delay a user wants, or why this feature
is so well hidden that the panel of experts here couldn't figure it out
until now.  Just another mystery of the Mac....
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts
 most subtly on the human will." - Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"