Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp.mcl
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From: jwd@ihodms43.ATT.COM (nq8140700-Davison)
Subject: Menu solution
In-Reply-To: lynch@lsc.nwu.edu's message of 13 Sep 1995 00:36:36 GMT
Message-ID: <JWD.95Sep14135322@ihodms43.ATT.COM>
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Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 18:53:22 GMT
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   From: straz@cambridge.apple.com (Steve Strassmann)
   Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp.mcl
   Date: 8 Sep 1995 17:51:32 -0400

   At 10:37 PM 9/8/95, Peter Stone wrote:
    >I'm having problems with menu items. When my MCL application has 
    >more than let's say 500-1000 hierarchical menu items

   Are these spread throughout your app, or do you have a single
   menu containing over 500 items? (Yow!)

   Never mind whether it's a system limitation or not, what about
   your users and their sanity? Maybe it's time to consider a 
   different user interface, like floating palettes or preference 
   dialogs.

I don't know that I've seen the problem, but I used Paul McCartney's
docs-menu to add a menu containing files of interest.  I gave it a
(directory pattern) like ("contributions:**;" "*.lisp"). That produces
a lot of entries in a single menu -- I didn't bother to count (or scroll to
the end), but I'd bet it's more than 500 files.

I decided it wasn't useful, as you say.  I'd prefer that each directory
introduce another submenu, maybe.  But in any case I'd end up with a very
large menu tree.  Still, I prefer the pull-aside & scroll with the mouse
access to the directory tree to the SFDialog point & scroll & point &
click.  It might be especially nice if the menu remembered my last
selection...

But, I suppose it simply proves your point -- a different user interface is
better.  (But it sure was easy to use the existing code, and I'm just
beginning...)


Why does it seems so much easier to program the mac in lisp than in C or
even Smalltalk?  



--
Joe Davison 	jwd@ihodms.att.com
