Chapter 7: continued

UserLand Menu, continued

Quick Script Window, or Command-semicolon, opens the Frontier Quick Script window (see Figure 7-11). This window allows you to type in one-line scripts that run immediately. Type in the script, and press Enter or click on the window's Run button. Whatever value is generated by the script is displayed in the message area at the bottom of the window.

Figure 7-11. The Quick Script Window in Frontier

Run Selection, or Command-slash, has slightly different behavior depending on the type of the frontmost Frontier window. In a word processing text document, it runs the exact selection, putting the result as a message in the main window. In outline windows, this option runs the entire line (independent of the exact selection) and places the generated value as the first subhead of the line. In menubar windows, the script linked to the item is run. In table windows, the selected string or script is run if possible.

Jump to Cell..., or Command-J, provides a way to move directly to a specific cell location in the Object Database. Choosing this option displays a dialog like the one shown in Figure 7-12. Just type in the name of the table location you want to look at, press Return (or click the OK button) and Frontier will open it for you. Frontier 4 adds a popup menu in the lower left corner, giving you quick access to the most recent places you have jumped.

Figure 7-12. Dialog for Jump to Cell... Menu Option

Find & Replace is a hierarchical menu. All of this item's sub-menus have Command-key equivalents and you'll probably find yourself using the find-replace capability in Frontier much more often with those keyboard shortcuts than with the menu options.

Command-F invokes the Find & Replace Dialog option, which in turn displays a dialog like the one shown in Figure 7-13.

Figure 7-13. Frontier Find & Replace Dialog

Command-G repeats the last find operation from the current cursor position, looking for the next occurrence of the string for which you are searching. Command-H carries out the replacement operation called for in the Find & Replace dialog and then repeats the last find operation from the current cursor position.

Agents is another hierarchical menu. A Frontier agent is a UserTalk script that runs as a background process, repeating its operations at specified intervals (see Chap 10). This menu's choices are shown in Figure 7-14.

Figure 7-14. Options on Agents Hierarchical Menu

The first option, Open Agents Table, displays the table system.agents (see Figure 7-15). This is where all agent scripts in Frontier are stored. It is like any other table; you can open its contents and edit them, add to the table, and so forth.

Figure 7-15. Agents Table Open for Editing

The other two options on the Agents menu item's hierarchical menu turn agents on and off at the user's direction. Turning agents off can make scripts execute more quickly. All agent scripts are either running or not as a group. You cannot turn one agent off and leave others on -- although you can cut an agent script from the agents table and paste it somewhere else for later retrieval.

NOTE

If agents are turned off, Frontier's automatic changing of menus based on which window is frontmost (discussed later in this chapter) will not work. That behavior depends on an agent script.

The Common Styles hierarchical menu is shown in Figure 7-16. These are four of the more common and useful type font and size combinations we've found in experimenting with Frontier.

Figure 7-16. Common Styles Menu from UserLand Menu

We encourage you to change these entries to suit your own style and preferences for font and size combinations. To do so, just follow the instructions at the beginning of this chapter to open one of these scripts. They all look the same except for their specific font and size contents. Here's the one for 9-point Geneva, for example:

By editing either or both of these lines of script to call for a different type and/or size, you can customize this menu easily. Don't forget to rename the menu item so you'll remember what it does. You could also add your own styles to this menu by copying a script from one of the existing entries and then editing it after attaching it to a newly created entry in the menu.

The Export menu item produces the hierarchical menu shown in Figure 7-17. As you can see, this menu is divided into three functional groups. The first displays a word processing text object that explains this sub-menu's use. The second is used to export any Frontier object so that it can be transferred to another root file.

Figure 7-17. Export Hierarchical Menu from UserLand Menu

Choosing Export an Object... produces a dialog box like the one shown in Figure 7-18. Type in the name of the object you wish to export, provide a file name at the next prompt and Frontier will store the object in an external file that can be transferred to other Frontier users. (The use of exporting and importing operations to modify and save portions of the Object Database is discussed in Chapter 6.)

Figure 7-18. Dialog for Exporting Object in Frontier

The last three items involve desktop scripts. Export a Desktop Script... (or or the Command-3 keyboard shortcut) will prompt for details then save. See Chapter 9 for details.

Export All Desktop Scripts... produces a similar result, except that it will individually export every script in the table system.deskscripts into a folder called Desktop Scripts in Frontier's current directory.

The last item in the Export hierarchical menu is Open Desktop Scripts Table. It opens the table called system.deskscripts for editing (see Figure 7-19).

Figure 7-19. Desktop Scripts Table

The On-Line Docs menu item in the UserLand menu is the last entry. Like the four preceding it, it produces a hierarchical menu, which is shown in Figure 7-20. These items were covered in Chapter 4.

Figure 7-20. On-Line Docs Hierarchical Menu from UserLand Menu