Volume 6A: Motif Programming Manual

Output of simple_option.c

16.3 Designing Menu Systems

The advantages of the simple menu creation routines are clear. It is easy to create menus with them, the code is

extremely readable, and the job gets done without much room for error. Once the code is written, it is easy to modify

the callback function, labels, mnemonics, and accelerators used by a menu.

There are also some disadvantages to using the simple menu creation functions. One problem is that they require a

great deal of bulk to create a single menu. If an application needs to create a large number of menus, it has to use a lot

of redundant code because the simple creation routines make it difficult to build a looping construct or a function to

automate the process. Since the creation routines name the widgets using non−unique names, it is difficult to specify

labels, mnemonics, and accelerators in a resource file. If these values are set using a creation routine, this point is

irrelevant because the routines hard−code the values. The simple creation routines also make it impossible to specify

different callback functions for menu items.

To get around the shortcomings of the simple creation routines, we are going to build a new system that is just as

simple to use, but more dynamic and easy to modify. Before we can build our new system, we need to examine the

advanced Motif menu creation routines and discuss the overall design of ...