Palm OS Programming, 2nd Edition

Menu Resources

The .prc file contains a resource for each menu bar in your application. Each menu bar is in turn composed of a number of menus, each of which contains menu items. Each menu item has an associated item ID and, optionally, a shortcut key.

Tip

When you design your menu bars, you need to make sure that no two menu items in menus displayed at the same time have the same shortcut key—each shortcut must be unique.

Here’s a simple menu bar resource (with ID 1000) with two menus, each with two items (the item IDs are 1001, 1002, 1101, and 1102):

MENU 1000
BEGIN
    PULLDOWN "Menu1"
    BEGIN
        MENUITEM "Item1"   1001     "I"
        MENUITEM "Item2"   1002  
    END
    PULLDOWN "Menu2"
    BEGIN
        MENUITEM "Item3"   1101 
        MENUITEM "Item4"   1102 
    END
END

To define the shortcut keys of menu items in PilRC, simply supply the character surrounded by double quotes. In our simple example, the first menu item has a shortcut key of “I.”

Tip

The PilRC CodeWarrior plug-in requires that each of the item IDs in a menu be consecutive (for example, 1101, 1102, 1103). The command-line version of PilRC imposes no such restriction. However, for compatibility with both versions, we recommend that you always make your menu item IDs sequential within a menu.

Associating Menu Bars with Forms

When you create a form, you specify the ID of a menu bar to go along with it. A form whose menu bar ID is has no associated menu bar. The Palm OS automatically uses the menu bar of a form while the form is active. More than one form can use the same ...