Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!decwrl!shelby!agate!saturn!ssyx.ucsc.edu!sirkm
From: sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Greg Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: How do I reliably set the userLevel of a stack ?
Message-ID: <8651@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 7 Aug 89 18:59:41 GMT
References: <113@citycs.UUCP> <9719@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <8622@saturn.ucsc.edu> <1989Aug6.001759.23338@sics.se>
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Greg Anderson)
Organization: UC Santa Cruz; Division of Social Sciences
Lines: 38

In article <1989Aug6.001759.23338@sics.se> ollef@sics.se (Olle Furberg) writes:
>It's against Apple user interface guidelines to change anything without
>kind permission of the user (that's why programs have alert dialogs).
>
>An even more disgusting thing is all these hidings of the menubar:
>DON'T HIDE THE MENUBAR IN THE SCRIPT!!!!!

Well said.  (Same goes with your other comments that I cut.)

>Its OK to ad your own menus to the menubar by using some XCMDs. That's  the
>best way to show the user what choices could be made without clogging up the
>screen. However, adding your own menus without changing the userlevel, might
>be complicated: on a Plus/SE-screen there's not much room for a new menu
>esp. when you are paint-mode.

If the user is in paint mode, he probably doesn't want to use your custom
menus anyway.  Most stacks should be able to add enough (two or three)
menus with "File  Edit  Go  Tools  Objects" showing (i.e., the user is in
scripting mode).  In the few instances where more than three menus are
needed, it would be okay to change the userlevel to browsing if one of the
menus had an option to return to scripting mode.

However, I would tend to question any stack that used so many menus.  I can
think of instances where such an interface would be desirable, but before
you go and throw up five custom menu items, first ask yourself if the same
thing could not be done with buttons on an index card.



>
>
>      /Olle


  ___\    /___               Greg Anderson              ___\    /___ 
  \   \  /   /         Social Sciences Computing        \   \  /   /
   \  /\/\  /    University of California, Santa Cruz    \  /\/\  /
    \/    \/              sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu             \/    \/