Tutorial

Submenus

The tutorial looks at the writing macros with submenus. It assumes that you are already familiar with macros. If not, it is suggested that you look at the first 3 lessons in the Introduction to macros Tutorial. It also assumes that you are familiar the "menu" commands: {MenuOptionX ...}, {ShowMenu}, {IfOptionX ...} and {ElseOption ...}. If not, please look at the tutorial Writing Macros with Menus.

Displaying submenus doesn't require any new commands. It just requires responding to one menu item with another set of menu commands.

• Method 1
• Method 2
• Method 3

Lets look at the commands.

• {MenuOption}{MenuOptionA Pet}{MenuOptionB African animals}{ShowMenu}: The main menu has two options: A: "Pet" and B: "African animals". The first "{MenuOption}" just clears any previous menu. {ShowMenu} shows the menu.
• The second menu is invoked if the user selected "Pets"
  Tigers roar. Cats meow. {IfOptionA {MenuOption}{MenuOptionC Cat}{MenuOptionD Dog}{ShowMenu}{Comment
  }{IfOptionC Cats meow. }{IfOptionD Dogs bark. }}
  Again their are just two menu items C, "Cat" and D: "Dog". When the user selects one of these items, "Cats meow." or "Dogs bark." is typed into the file.
• {IfOptionB {MenuOption}{MenuOptionE Elephant}{MenuOptionT Tiger}{ShowMenu}{Comment
  }{IfOptionE Elephants are big. }{IfOptionT Tigers roar. }}
  On the other hand if the user selected B, "African animals", the user gets the choice of Elephants and Tigers. Either "Elephants are big" or "Tigers roar" will be added to the file.

If you run this macro, you will discover that these submenu are different than the normal Windows submenus. When you pick an item from the main menu, it disappears and is replaced by the appropriate submenu.

Options A and B got pretty complicated in Method 1. Because all the option characters are distinct, we can arrange the macro a differently to make it look simpler and more readable. The user will be unable to tell the difference so the menus will not be repeated here. The main menu is unchanged so we begin with processing options B and C.

• {IfOptionA {MenuOption}{MenuOptionC Cat}{MenuOptionD Dog}{ShowMenu}}
  When processing option A, all we do is set up its submenu.
• {IfOptionB {MenuOption}{MenuOptionE Elephant}{MenuOptionT Tiger}{ShowMenu}}
  Likewise for option B
• {IfOptionC Cats meow. }{Comment
  }{IfOptionD Dogs bark. }{Comment
  }{IfOptionE Elephants are big. }{Comment
  }{IfOptionT Tigers roar. }
  Finally we specify how to process the submenu items. In this case, each item is quite simple.

In this method we will put the submenus in their own file. One macro file serves as the main menu. While we end up with multiple files, each of the files is pretty simple. Moreover the submenu macros could also be used in a stand alone manner or in another menu.

The main menu macro takes advantage of the read command to read in the submenu macros. Lets look at those commands.

• {IfOptionA {Read SubmenusMethod3Pets.macro}}
  {IfOptionB {Read SubmenusMethod3Africa.macro}}

We see that if option A is selected from the main menu, SubmenusMethod3Pets.macro is read. It has the Cat and Dog options. If option B is selected, SubmenusMethod3Africa is read. It presents the Elephant and Tiger options.

The other commands are just about the same as in the previous macro.

One of the ways that this method could be used is to combine several macros into "one" so that they could all be accessed from the Macro Control or a single tool button.

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Revised: 10/5/2011