Open Amiga - Projects

Currently, the Amiga menu system is the oldest component of OS4's user interface - it hasn't changed since 2.0 times.

As far as functionality is concerned, the menu system is a well-proven concept. It could use some improvements here and there but overall, it works. However, from a programmer's standpoint, it is a nightmare, especially if you need dynamic menu content that reacts to the current state of your application's functions. The fact that system structures must be accessed directly, or that you must open the practically obsolete gadtools.library to make your life a bit easier, calls for attention.

Window.class and its WINDOW_NewMenu tag may have made menustrip creation easier but if you need more than just displaying the menu, you still have to resort to changing bit flags in system structures. This is both clumsy and dangerous.

Developing a ReAction class that would wrap BOOPSI code around the Intuition menu system would help greatly. The idea is that structure data is supplied/accessed via tags, and things like ticking or disabling menu items are done through methods.

The existence of the class would also unify the way menus are programmed under OS4.x (currently, there are three ways to add menus: using Intuition, using gadtools.library, and using window.class tags).

Created by:

trixie

Created at:

20091109 17:53

Deadline:

Not set

Finished at:

Not finished

Last update:

20091110 12:50

Assigned to:

Not assigned

Suggested by:

Trixie

Task list for this project

Title

Assigned

Progress

Updated

Created by

Open Amiga project website, Created in 2008 by Björn Hagström