Menus and Menu Options

Menus provide end-users with a number of options. Which menus a user is allowed to access depends upon the authorization granted to the user group to which the user belongs.

Each menu option is a combination of:

•A line of text (i.e. the text that appears on the menu).

•Some kind of action (e.g. activate a window, a batch job, a action statement, or a submenu).

•A specification of whether or not the menu option must be sensitive to the state the system is in.

In the Windows Designer, menu options are identified as Menu Lines and Menu Pages. A menu page in this case leads to a submenu, a menu line can be used to perform all other actions.

Use of action statements from the menu is supported. As complex window constellations only get to post one single menu (for the main window), execution of menu-triggered action statements is adapted. The basic context is always the main info window (the one that posted the menu), as opposed to action statements that are generated by an event in the window, where the basic context is the class in whose context the method has been defined.

NOTE: For the Window and Help menu pages, there are a few restrictions:

•The STD_WINDOW and STD_HELP menu pages must be options on the main menu page (by default US_MAIN), and NOT on other menu pages.

•These two menu pages can NOT contain other menu pages.

•Changing the Ranking of these menu pages within the main menu page has NO effect.

•If you want to translate the menu lines of these menu pages, refer to help topic: "How to Translate the Default Window and Help Menu Options", otherwise you might end up with incomplete functionality.