Subject: RE: FVWM: Tiered popups don't always highlight

From: "Dameron, Gregg" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 14:51:40 -0600

> From: Dominik Vogt [mailto:[email-masked]]

<snip>

> The whole idea of 'posting' a menu is to prevent that items from
> other menus can be selected accidentally.

It "locks" the parent menu "Popup" item so that the popped-up submenu, and
any sub-submenus, have the mouse's exclusive attention.  Correct?

> When you click, menus
> go into 'posted' mode and only items in the posted menu can be
> selected by mouse motion.  It works exactly the way it was
> designed.

Hmm.  I guess I overloaded the term "post" in my previous post (ahem),
clouding the issue.  Let me try to restate.

I distinguish between menu-item "highlighting" (color changes when the
pointer is moved over it) vs. menu-item "selection" (some command is
performed when the mouse is clicked on it).  When MenuStyle is "Win" and the
pointer is moved over the items in MyMenu as configured below, the expected
behavior is:

AddToMenu MyMenu
+ "Item 1" Popup FooMenu  # hilighted: yes; selectable: yes
+ "Item 2" Exec exec foo  # hilighted: yes; selectable: yes
+ "Item 3" Title          # hilighted: no; selectable: no

So, a reasonable behavioral "rule" for the Win MenuStyle might be:
Highlighting is a precondition for selectability -- if a menu-item is
selectable (performs some command if clicked), it should always highlight
when the pointer moves over it, to "advertise" its selectability.

What I think you are saying (and what I am seeing) is that this "rule" is
not hard-and-fast.  If I have cascading ("tiered") popup menus, the initial
menu (Tier A) and the first submenu (Tier B) obey the rule under all
conditions.  But a sub-submenu (Tier C) behaves differently depending on how
its parent menu was popped up:

                           Tier-C "Exec" Item:
                           --------------------
Tier-A    Tier-B           Highlights   Exec
Menu      Menu             When         Occurs
Popped    Popped           Pointer      When
Up By:    Up By:           Over It?     Clicked?
-----------------------------------------------
XX        pointer moved    Yes          Yes     (1)
          over Tier-A
          "Popup" item
-----------------------------------------------
XX        mouse click      No           Yes     (2)
          on Tier-A
          "Popup" item

(XX=don't care)

Case 1 is in line with expectations.  Case 2 ("Exec without highlight") is
the behavior I find counterintuitive.  I hope I'm making sense here.

Gregg Dameron
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---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 09:48:42 +0200

> any sub-submenus, have the mouse's exclusive attention.  Correct?

Yes.

> clouding the issue.

I don't think so.  The described behaviour is commonly called
"posting" menus.

> Let me try to restate.

Counterintuitive maybe, but fvwm does not distinguish between
hilighting and selecting an item.  Thus, if items in the sub menu
were hilighted, their associated actions would also be executed
(dynamic menu actions, popping up their sub menus, animating other
menus out the way, raising above the parent menu, etc.).  When fvwm
is in "posted menu" mode, the posted menu works normally.  For all
other menus:

  * Mouse motion is ignored.  Items are not hilighted or selected.
  * Pressing any key terminates posted mode.
  * Clicking on any menu item activates the item, regardless
    whether it's the parent menu, a predecessor of it or the child
    menu.
  * Clicking the item of the parent menu that posted the current
    menu, terminate posted mode.

I don't see a way to change this without a rewrite of the whole
menu code :-(

Bye

Dominik ^_^  ^_^