I recycled an old program from DOS days and created a tcl prog which reads a script file at startup and present this as hierarchical menus. I need this to work on several inhomogenous systems where the icons where here and there and everywhere and nowhere, and I need a way to quickly run things.

Every menu item could be a complete tcl script, with some restrictions and some helper routines like "select" or "msgbox".

Example of a dialog screen with an open sub selection menu:

[http://home.arcor.de/hoffenbar/prog/menue.jpg]

Some words about keys and functions:

   * '''<Return>'''           starts the selected item, that is: going down in the hierarchy or exec'ing the underlying commands.
   * '''<Hotkey>'''           locates and starts the first matching item (top down). Hotkeys are not shown so far.
   * '''<.>'''                goes up one level up in the hierarchy (or <BackSpace>).
   * '''</>'''                goes to the root menu (or <F10>).
   * '''<F1>'''               shows minimal help and some infos.
   * '''<F3>'''               shows the commands behind the current item.
   * '''<F5>'''               reloads the menu-definition files.
   * '''<Ctrl><c><Ctrl><s>''' shows console.
   * '''<Ctrl><c><Ctrl><h>''' hides console.
   * '''<Ctrl><f>'''          perform a search in result (text) windows.
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The programm loads all files '''*.mnu''' (in that order) out of
   1. the (VFS-)internal dir ''plugin'';
   1. in the program (.exe) directory;
   1. all folders specified via the '''--mnuDir "folder [[folder [[...]]]]"''' switch -or- in the current directory (pwd).

Those .MNUs can initially (at the root level of parsing) contain only a very limited set of commands:

   1. '''menu''' {title {code {}} {condition {}}} - adds a submenu. Menus nest. Each menu entry ends with three dots '''...'''
   1. '''app''' {title {code {}} {condition {}}} - adds an entry in the current menu (the initial menu, root, is automatically created, so it's possible to add ''app'' statements outside any ''menu''s)
   1. '''@startmenu''' - a kind of maceo: dynamically including the current users and all users startmenu entries at the current position through adding ''app''-entries as if they where directly specified

If an ''app''-title begins with an asterisk * it is "executed" right after the start of menue.exe, as a simple kind of ''autostart mechanism'' (without any control yet, though).

(...Description to be continued...)

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Additionally, the file(s) '''*.mak''' are sourced ''only once'' at program load time in that order:
   1. the (VFS-)internal dir ''plugin'';
   1. in the program (.exe) directory.

They could contain almost any tcl command and some tk commands, and are not intended to be edited by an end user. For this reason the pwd and other dirs are not parsed for makros. Some internal macros are part of the exe, containing some usefull (at least for me) procs, like

   * '''start''' {what {confirmWarning 1}} 
   * '''askExec''' {what {title "Wirklich ausführen?"}} 
   * '''cmd2file''' {cmd {ext ""}} 
   * '''address''' {addr cmd {async "1"}} 
   * '''tempName''' {} 
   * '''readFile''' {file}

...and some more which are probably too specific and not of common interest (they will be removed in future releases).
The following commands are "built in"; they are always available (unless overwritten by user macros, of course):

   * '''select''' {items {title "Auswahl:"} {opt ""}} - Display a subselection list like in the screendump above; ''opt'' not used yet...
   * '''cmdLineHelp''' {title txt args} - shows a scrollable textbox with output results of commands, for example
   * '''YesNo''' {msg} - for now, the ''title'' is fixed and cannot be specified
   * '''AlarmYesNo''' {msg} - same as above
   * '''msgBox''' {msg {title "Info:"}} -
   * '''msgBoxE''' {msg args} - title fixed - don't know in what state I was programming that... 
   * '''subTitle''' {text} - sets the centered text at the top of the screen right below the title line
   * '''scrW''' - is just a shorthand for ''winfo screenwidth .''
   * '''scrH''' - is just a shorthand for ''winfo screenheight .''
   * '''askValue''' {prompt {title "Eingabe:"} {width 40}} - like VB's ''inputbox''; if width < 0, the input is hidden
   * '''console''' - just the console command
   * '''statusLine''' - sets (overwrites!) the status line at the bottom of the screen (should be better divided into a program and user area)
   * '''tk_chooseDirectory''' - just that (don't know why I don't created an alias for this...)
   * '''tk_getOpenFile''' - just that (don't know why I don't created an alias for this...)
   * '''tk_getSaveFile''' - just that (don't know why I don't created an alias for this...)
   * '''tk_messageBox''' - just that (don't know why I don't created an alias for this...)
   * '''tk_dialog''' - just that (don't know why I don't created an alias for this...)
   * '''setDefaultValue''' - sets the default value for a ''askValue''-dialog (because of compat I was too lazy to add another arg to ''askValue''...)
   * '''getDefaultValue''' - gets the default value of a ''askValue''-dialog

''cmdLineHelp'' is, despite of it's name, of general interest. It can be used to show the results of commands in a scrollable and searchable (Ctrl+F) Box.

You can find a copy of the program here: [http://home.arcor.de/hoffenbar/prog/menue.zip].

Because the menu files I have are very specific and show some internals of our company, I don't include them in the .ZIP. If I later find time I will add some usefull examples here.

The program now only has one command line switch --mnuDir. Current version as of June 2009 is '''0.88'''. I have 100 ideas to improve it, but too little time. In fact, the program is far away from the capabilities of it's DOS ancestor or being complete...

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'''Known issues:'''

   * Importing the system's startmenu entries via ''@startmenu'' sometimes lasts very long, because some genious program designers populate the startmenu with all kinds of (unstartable) junk... A kind of interpretation should take place ([file executable] won't help much).

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