Changing Menus And Commands; About Menu And Command Configuration - Adobe FrameMaker 7.0 User Manual

Changing Menus and Commands

FrameMaker is configured to display menus and commands as described in the FrameMaker User Guide and in
online Help. You can choose to display all the menus and commands or a subset of them called quick menus.
You can change both the complete and quick menu configurations by adding, removing, and rearranging
menus and commands, and by adding, changing, or removing command shortcuts. You can also create a
custom menu bar for document windows.
This chapter describes how to switch between quick, complete, and custom menus; write and use a menu
customization file to change the menus and their contents; and change command shortcuts. It also describes
where FrameMaker looks for menu and command configuration files when starting.
About menu and command configuration
The main FrameMaker window has a menu bar. Each of the items on the menu bar is a menu. When you select
a menu, a list of menu items appears. A menu item can be a command, another menu, or a separator.
A menu on a menu is sometimes called a cascading menu or a submenu. When you pause on or select a menu
item that is a menu, you see another menu displayed to the side of the current menu.
When you select a menu item that is a command, a predefined action happens: a dialog box comes up, or some
function is performed. Menu commands correspond either to a built-in function or a program written to use
the FrameMaker API.
A separator on a menu is a line that visually separates menu items into groups. On most menus, they are visible but
have no other function. However, on menu bars, they are invisible and serve a special function (see "Separator lines
on menu bars" on page 31).
Standard configuration files
The contents of menus are determined by four files. All menus are defined in one file. Commands that appear
on these menus are defined in one of three files. All of these definitions could be contained in a single file. They
are separated into multiple files for ease of understanding and maintenance.
A menu definition includes the menu's unique identifier, its label (as it appears in the user interface), and a list
of its menu items. It also contains an additional specification if the menu is reserved.
The menu definition files are:
fminit\maker\menus.cfg (for the FrameMaker product interface)
•
fminit\fmstruct\menus.cfg (for the Structured FrameMaker product interface)
•
The menus.cfg file specifies two menu sets that can appear in the standard menu bar. One set displays all menus
and commands as they're described in your user guide. These menus are called the complete menus. The other
set displays a subset of the menus and commands—quick menus—if you aren't using all the features. For
example, the complete File menu contains the Preferences command and the Import and Utilities submenus,
but the quick File menu does not. See "Changing menu configurations" on page 34 and "Menu and command
configuration files" on page 10 for how to work with these menu sets.
The menus.cfg file can also specify if command buttons appear in the upper-right corner of the document
window.
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