This directory contains menu files used by the buttonfly program.
This example illustrate an easy-to-configure method of creating a
button heirarchy.
Note that the ".menu" file in this directory is the top-level
menu for the first button encountered after starting up the demo.
All the ".menu" files that live beneath this directory conform to
this methodology to produce nested levels of buttons.
To run this example, the entire <toolbox>/src/demos and
<toolbox>/data subtrees must be available.
What follow is a liberal extract from the buttonfly(6D) man page on
how to configure Buttonfly to better customize it to fit your needs.
RECONFIGURING BUTTONFLY
Buttonfly's menus were designed to be simple to change with any UNIX
text editor (such as vi ). When it is run with no arguments, it looks
for button descriptions in a file called '.menu' in the current
directory. If it is given one argument, it will look in that file
for button definitions instead.
Buttonfly uses a very simple format to describe its buttons. The
format has four different kinds of lines: comments, titles, actions,
and commands.
Any line beginning with a '#' character is considered a comment and is
ignored.
Button titles, like comments, always start in the first column of the
file, and may be anything not starting with a '#'. Titles may be a
maximum of 36 characters long; buttonfly will automatically separate the
title into a maximum of three lines of twelve characters, separating
words in the title at spaces.
Action lines start with a tab and end with a newline, and may be any
UNIX command. Multiple actions may be specified for a button by listing
them after the button one per line, each starting with a tab. Actions
may not span more than one line, but may be any length. If no actions
are speci- fied for a button, the button is displayed, but nothing will
happen when it is selected.
Commands, like actions, start with a tab character. Currently, the
commands recognized are '.menu.', '.popup.', '.cd.', '.color.',
'.backcolor.', and '.highcolor.'. Everything else is assumed to be an
action and will be executed as a UNIX command in a shell (see sh(1)).
The special action called '.menu.' is used to specify a button that has
several buttons attached to the back of it. When buttonfly sees '.menu.
filename' it will create a new set of buttons from the descriptions in
'filename'. If it cannot find 'filename' in the current directory, then
nothing happens. If 'filename' is '-', then the new set of buttons is
created from the standard output of the previous actions (see example
below). Note that any 'cd' commands in an action list do not affect the
directory in which buttonfly looks for the filenames specified in
'.menu.' commands, becuase actions are executed in a sub-shell (see the
'.cd.' command below).
Another special actions is '.popup.'. It is used to define a pop-up
menu entry attached to a button. When buttonfly sees '.popop. title'
it adds an entry 'title' to the button's pop-up menu. The actions
following a .popup. command will be executed when that menu entry is
chosen. Buttonfly automatically provides a 'Do It' entry, which has
the same effect as pressing the left mouse button.
The '.cd.' action is used to change buttonfly's idea of the current
working directory. When the button containing the .cd. command is
pressed, buttonfly will chdir into that directory before executing
that button's actions, and all buttons underneath that button will
also be executed in that directory (unless they also have .cd. commands).
Note that executing the regular 'cd' shell command in a button does not
affect buttonfly's idea of the current working directory, since all
button actions are executed in their own shell environment.
The command '.color.' followed by three numbers in the range 0.0 ... 1.0
specifies the red, green and blue components of a button's color, and
'.highcolor' does the same for the color of the button as it is being
selected. '.backcolor.' changes the color of the back of the button,
which becomes the background color of the next set of buttons (displayed
when the button flips over). Note that using color commands at the top
of a file, before any buttons have been defined, causes the default
colors to be changed for all subsequent buttons. To change the
background color to red for the first button and all subsequent
buttons you would specify:
.backcolor. 1.0 0.0 0.0
in the menu description file before any buttons are defined.
EXAMPLES
The following are example buttonfly .menu files, with descriptions of
what they do.
This is a very simple button called 'First' that has the buttons defined
in the file '.menu_second' on the back of it.
First
.menu. .menu_second
Here are three buttons. The 'Parent' button is purple and will flip
over and display the other two buttons when pressed (they will be
displayed on a purple background, since that is the color on the back
of the first button). The 'Demonstrate...' button changes directories
and then runs a program when pressed, and 'Recurse' flips over and shows
the first button again, this time on a blue background since the
'.backcolor.' command changes the background color to blue.
#Save this in a file called '.menu'
Parent
.color. .89 .10 .89
.backcolor. .89 .10 .89
.highcolor. 1.0 .5 1.0
.menu. child
#Save the following buttons in a file called 'child'
Demonstrate GL/NeWS Interface
cd /usr/NeWS/demo
glnews
Recurse
.backcolor. 0.0 0.0 1.0
.menu. .menu
Here is a very complicated button, which builds a button file based
on the files it finds in a directory full of files. When pressed,
it builds the file and then uses .menu. to flip over, exposing entries
for all the files it found. Note that this allows you to delete or add
image files, and the buttons will always be accurate. It also has a
pop-up menu on it giving help; the first .popup command specifies the
title of the menu using the %t feature of Silicon Graphics menus.
Show An Image
cd /usr/demos/data/images
#The following two lines must all be on the
# same line in the .menu file
/bin/ls *.rgb | awk 'BEGIN{FS="."}{print "Show " $1
"\n\tipaste /usr/demos/data/images/" $0 "\n"}'
.menu. -
.popup. ShowImage Menu %t
.popup. Ipaste Man Page
wsh -c man ipaste
BUGS
Buttonfly will not work if the first character of a file is a TAB
followed by anything other than .color., .backcolor., or .highcolor.
It is safest to eliminate any blank lines from the files you create.
Buttonfly may crash if given an arbitrary file as input.
The maximum number of buttons on any level of the hierarchy is 32.
If a program fails to run, nothing happens-- no error messages or
warnings are given. This can be considered either a feature or a bug.
Specifying %F, %f, %x, or %m as part of a .popup. title will give bad
results, and may crash the program. Using %t to specify a title works,
but any actions specified for that entry will never be executed (since
it is impossible to select a title entry).
FILES
/usr/demos/.m* are the button files the demos use.
Documentation
Subdirectories
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