Technotes

Parameters for MDEF Message #3

Technote TB 36 November 1987

Revised by: March 1988
Written by: Chris Derossi November 1987

In order to support popup menus, menu definition procedures (MDEFs) must now respond to a new message, mPopupMsg. mPopupMsg is message number 3. When your MDEF is called with this message, it should calculate the rectangle in which the popup menu should appear.

The interface to an MDEF is

	PROCEDURE MyMDEF(message: Integer; theMenu: MenuHandle; VAR menuRect:
 			Rect; hitPt: Point; VAR whichItem: Integer);

For mPopupMsg, the message parameter will be 3 and theMenu will be a MenuHandle to your menu. The MDEF should compute a rectangle for the menu such that the item passed in whichItem will be displayed at hitPt. See the figure below:

The hitPt parameter, though, is NOT a Point. Instead, this parameter is used to pass the top left of the item, passing the top coordinate and then the left coordinate. This is the opposite order of the fields in a Point. The values can be used together as a LongInt, with left in the high word and top in the low word, or separately as two Integers.

A more correct Pascal interface to the MDEF (for the mPopupMsg only) would be:

	PROCEDURE MyMDEF(message: Integer; theMenu: MenuHandle; VAR menuRect:
 			   Rect; top, left: Integer; VAR whichItem: Integer);

Note: The MPW interface files incorrectly list mPopupMsg as 4; it should be 3.

Further Reference:

* The Menu Manager

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