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Glenn Posts: 99
05/08/2015
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It took me a couple hours to figure out how to really configure a program to run using SyMenu. Once I figured it out, I realized that the reason was because SyMenu was designed based on some assumptions from portable program design, which are neither stated nor explained in the manual. It has been a while since I looked at portable programs, and I have probably never created one to any portable program standard or specification, but I have made a fair number of programs that are portable because they are single-file executables... the simplest packaging case.
My first astonishment was that SyMenu.exe was _inside_ of the SyMenu folder instead of beside it. Once I started thinking about what I'd read about portable programs, I realized that this is the way portable programs are supposed to be constructed... the highest level folder is the container for everything, including the program and any files or folders it uses during startup or operation.
In fact, this is an assumption that is not stated in the SyMenu manual... SyMenu is a portable program, so "of course" it obeys that rule. But that rule is very unnatural to someone that isn't regularly using or creating portable programs.
My second astonishment was that when I had path problems, I fiddled around and realized that somehow the "relative" parameter I had passed to a SyProgram was relative to the program file rather than the CWD, and so I tweaked it to work, but then the program was getting the wrong CWD, and I looked to see what the "Start In:" value was set to, was that there was no "Start In:" value!
In fact, this is an assumption that is unstated in the SyMenu manual... regarding the "current working directory" or CWD (in Unix/C terms) or "Start in:" (Windows shortcut term) or %CD% (Windows CMD with command extensions enabled terms) or %WORKING DIRECTORY% in SyMenu terms. SyMenu being intended for use with portable programs, and understanding how portable programs work, therefore by design sets the CWD for a program to launch to be the inside of the highest level folder for the program. This fits perfectly with the expectations of portable programs, but is very unnatural to someone that is accustomed to setting up Windows Shortcuts. The SyMenu manual's description of setting up a SyProgram sounds very much like setting up a Windows shortcut, and Windows shortcuts can be dragged to SyMenu for use, but not everything is preserved, particularly, the "Start In:" value.
This thread: http://www.ugmfree.it/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=24 was one that I found when searching for "Start In", and the explanation there
This problem is due to a not perfect portability of these programs: they trust in the existence of a parameter that is not strictly pertinent with portable programs. The parameters is 'Working Directory'.
You can see this attribute in quite any Windows link (it's usually called 'Start in').
sounds very backwards to me, but it gave me the clue that I needed to set the "advanced" working directory parameter to "%WORKING DIRECTORY%", and then my tweaked relative path failed again, and I had to untweak it, and then I realized the difference in the basic assumptions that I was making versus those assumed by the SyMenu manual: the exact set of specifications that defined to allow programs to be portable.
I'm not sure if there are other assumptions that should be stated. Certainly there should be a section in the manual that mentions that SyMenu is a portable program, and its primary use is to work with portable programs, and that means that the following list of items are different than users of typical installed Windows programs would expect:
1) SyMenu lives within its container directory.
2) SyMenu, by default, launches programs with the CWD set to the program's container directory.
3) relative parameters passed to the program must be relative to the CWD used to launch the program.
4) SyMenu, when importing a Windows shortcut, ignores the Start In setting in favor of the container directory.
One might also include a crib sheet of how to configure SyMenu to launch installed programs. List corresponds to the above.
1) To enable easy launching of SyMenu from local or portable or network directories, simply make a batch file wherever desired, and code a line
START "SyMenu" "path\to\SyMenu\SyMenu.exe"
2) Turn on the Advanced Settings and set working directory to "%WORKING DIRECTORY%" (too bad you didn't use %CD%)
3) no special action required, if #2 is done
4) Manually configure working directory to reflect the Start In setting (or some other value better suited to the environment of interest, if that is desired, but do not assume it will be inherited from the imported shortcut.
My lists may not be complete, because I haven't yet tapped the whole power of SyMenu. Now that I've figured out the above, though, I'm liking the looks of the resulting menus.
edited by Glenn on 05/08/2015
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