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Glenn Posts: 99
16/12/2015
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OK, you know the code, I don't. You convince me that implementation alternative 1 is too hard to be practical.
Implementation alternative 2 is an "end run" around the super class. Instead of a super class, there is a new SyBuiltIn subclass of SyItem, and when it gets clicked, it forwards that click to the "hidden" actual builtin, which uses its current class. On the surface, this sounds easy, but I realize there may be limitations that are not obvious.
Your new beta, and even the old regular and compact modes of operation, prove that the builtins, except maybe for title, are not tied to a particular position in the menu structure, but can be configured at any point in the menu structure. So this gives me a small hope that "SyBuiltIn" might be significantly easier, implementation-wise.
Your new features will still be useful and appreciated, just not quite as useful as they potentially could be. Perhaps an implementation that wouldn't be nearly as complex as the super class, but rather somewhat practical, will come to you in a dream: now that your conscious thought has explored the idea enough to reject it, your subconscious may develop a solution  Well, I can hope
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Glenn Posts: 99
16/12/2015
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I may have seen the "information on tooltip" option at some point, but I didn't have "Description checked" That is the cure!
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
16/12/2015
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Are we all crazy in this forum?
Well Glenn I'm very grateful to you because your terrific analysis. My TODO list has growing again thanks to your suggestions and this is a good thing if you are asking.
And, yes, the SyBuiltIn item is tickling my mind... now because of you I can't sleep anymore! And the new version hasn't been released yet...
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Glenn Posts: 99
16/12/2015
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Not sure your timezone, but my timeZZZZZZZZZZZZZone says I must go to bed... that's when the subconscious is most active... second most is in the shower, eh?
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
18/12/2015
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A new beta is available.
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Glenn Posts: 99
18/12/2015
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I like the new hover option.
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sl23 Posts: 285
21/12/2015
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Only two points from my initial startup that could be changed:
1. Bring back the Compact Menu.
2. Add an extra menu item for accessing SyMenu's Options instead of having to open Configuration/Advanced/Options.
Otherwise I agree that there may be advantages of being able to treat these items as if they're a normal SyItem, as I believe Glenn stated above. I haven't read the whole post, so I can't give an objective opinion yet on this.
But so far I like it, apart from the two points above.
Well done and thanks Gian, fantastic work.
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Glenn Posts: 99
22/12/2015
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@sl23: I think you can make your own compact menu, but I agree it would be a convenience if there were a button that created "just like old compact menu" and another "just like old complete menu", and then a "minimum" button. That was part of what I said in my post.
I like your idea of a direct menu to Configuration / Advanced / Options. Or maybe the possibility of going directly to _any_ of the sub tabs in the Options menu. People discover over time the areas of SyMenu configuration they use the most, and getting there fast would be good. That would put more entries in the what is "available", but wouldn't clutter the overall menus except when people configure their menu to include such items.
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
22/12/2015
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@sl23.
Your idea to create an extra item for accessing the options form directly is great. You'll surely find it in the next beta or final version.
A question for you: in your opinion should the new options item be included in the base menu and in the advanced menu?
As Glenn says the compact menu is easy to recreate except for two little details.
1) The action modifiers are no longer integrated in the title, so, if interested, you need an extra item (an extra row) in your menu. In my opinion it is not an issue and if it were, you can now move the exit item to a second level so you will regain the lost room.
The second problem is that the title doesn't allow sub items as it does in the old compact menu, but this issue will be solved in the next beta/final version.
Maybe in future I'll create new built in configuration besides base and advanced. One of those could be the old compact menu but again it is not an issue since you are completely free to build whatever you want now.
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sl23 Posts: 285
22/12/2015
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That's a tricky decision! I suppose it should only be in the advanced menu. Should basic users require access to options they can still access it via the current method, maybe? This way, advanced users have the quick access and base users sort of have it hidden to avoid doing something they shouldn't. How about a password access to the options? For situations where you don't want users to access the options? Or is that the same as ReadOnly?
Also, regarding Modifiers, would it be possible to hide ones that are never used? I'm curious why you removed the compact menu? I much preferred that. If that can be integrated with customisation of the menu, as in the beta, then when cycling through Modifiers, ability to hide those not in use as stated before would be a bonus!
Thanks for your efforts ;-)
edited by sl23 on 22/12/2015
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
23/12/2015
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Yes the password to options is useless because this scenario it's already managed by the read only option.
And again yes your argument is correct: the direct access to options is a useful shortcut for advanced users not basic ones.
The question now is: do I have to add the shortcut option item in the standard advanced menu configuration? Well for the same reason I don't think so because an advanced user knows where to find it and how to activate it.
The compact menu was a pain to maintain exactly because of the modifiers integratated in the title. The title from the compact menu and from the normal menu are infact different components and I had to implement, test, document all the new features twice. Besides the pinned feature was unavailable in the compact menu and impossible to implement.
Now we have a single title element that includes the ability to have drop down items (you'll find it in the next beta... yes I confirm that I am forced to release another beta maybe already tomorrow...). So the only lost feature is the integrated action modifier tool, the most buggy one.
The idea to disable single modifiers is viable. If you start SyMenu in elevated mode you'll see that the elevate modifier is already disabled, so extend this feature to others via options is possible. Low priority for this feature.
I won't implement another button to set the compact menu. You have the base menu and the advanced menu. If you like a menu similar to the compact one you press the advanced button and drag search, my computer, plugin and tools inside the title item.
It's not an hard operation.
For people like Glenn that manage a lot of SyMenu instances I'll implement an import and export feature which allows you to choose the options you want to export and the ones you want to import. In that way you can reproduce all or part of the settings of your master SyMenu. But I don't know when I can do that. For now you can manually operate at file level modifing the SyMenuConfig.zip file.
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Glenn Posts: 99
23/12/2015
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Gianluca wrote:
For people like Glenn that manage a lot of SyMenu instances I'll implement an import and export feature which allows you to choose the options you want to export and the ones you want to import. In that way you can reproduce all or part of the settings of your master SyMenu. But I don't know when I can do that. For now you can manually operate at file level modifing the SyMenuConfig.zip file.
We should discuss this at length before you start implementing such an import/export feature. Copy and tweak gets quite far. Command line variables would get quite a bit further, enabling to pass a few parameters to internal commends. Selecting (depending on how, of course) a large subset of options to Import/export sounds like a cumbersome way to copy and tweak... probably would take lots of clicks, probably would take lots of different dialogs where different types of things could be chosen. The only thing I can't figure out how to do with "copy and tweak" and "variables", is to enable the visibility of a command. So I'll extend my notion of where variables could be useful to an option in each SyItem to specify a variable to check to decide whether it should be displayed or not Similar to not displaying Configuration menu item if SyMenu is READONLY, but more general. Well, that is the start of the discussion. It can be continued here, in a different thread, or privately, as you choose.
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sl23 Posts: 285
23/12/2015
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Gianluca wrote:
And again yes your argument is correct: the direct access to options is a useful shortcut for advanced users not basic ones.
The question now is: do I have to add the shortcut option item in the standard advanced menu configuration? Well for the same reason I don't think so because an advanced user knows where to find it and how to activate it.
I'm confused?! You say it's a good idea for advanced users then say not to do it as they know where to find it! Only advanced users should have direct access to options, so it should be hidden out of sight for base users. If a base user decides to access options, a little exploration will show them where it is! That's how you become an advanced user, by exploring the unknown.
Gianluca wrote:
The compact menu was a pain to maintain exactly because of the modifiers integratated in the title. The title from the compact menu and from the normal menu are infact different components and I had to implement, test, document all the new features twice. Besides the pinned feature was unavailable in the compact menu and impossible to implement.
Now we have a single title element that includes the ability to have drop down items (you'll find it in the next beta... yes I confirm that I am forced to release another beta maybe already tomorrow...). So the only lost feature is the integrated action modifier tool, the most buggy one.
I'm fine with the lack of compact menu, I also like the idea of using the title as a container for menu structure.
Gianluca wrote:
The idea to disable single modifiers is viable. If you start SyMenu in elevated mode you'll see that the elevate modifier is already disabled, so extend this feature to others via options is possible. Low priority for this feature.
No problem, hopefully it'll get added in the not too distant future.
Gianluca wrote:
I won't implement another button to set the compact menu. You have the base menu and the advanced menu. If you like a menu similar to the compact one you press the advanced button and drag search, my computer, plugin and tools inside the title item.
That's ok, but perhaps the ability to save maybe one user preset? If you accidentally click one of these buttons your config is lost.
Regards
edited by sl23 on 23/12/2015
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
23/12/2015
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sl23 wrote:
I'm confused?! You say it's a good idea for advanced users then say not to do it as they know where to find it!
I'm speaking about the default advanced menu not a customized one. My question was: if you press the button advanced menu, do I have to include options item or not? Anyway you can add it by your own. Well I'm thinking to remove from the default advanced menu other items, that naturally remain available from the library on the right hand side. Don't ask what, I have to think about that, but if you have some suggestions let me know.
sl23 wrote:
If you accidentally click one of these buttons your config is lost.
It's not true. If you accidentally click one of the two button (advanced or base) you should accidentally click the OK or Apply button too. If you click Cancel instead your previous configuration is preserved.
Anyway you are right and I will implement it, but now I would like to focus on the current feature without adding some more.
@Glenn
I agree we should speak a lot about the import/export feature before starting to analyze it but for now I tell you that from the next beta you'll have the custom variables for the tooltip passed by the command line
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
23/12/2015
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A third beta is available.
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sl23 Posts: 285
23/12/2015
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Superb!!! Works a treat, and much better using Title as a Container, thanks Gian you've done a great job 
Btw, when I said about losing config when clicking Base or Advanced I mean once chosen you can't revert back. So I thought maybe have a user button that can revert to your own preset?
edited by sl23 on 23/12/2015
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
23/12/2015
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No this is and will be impossible because the menu is always built with a custom structure. When you choose and save advanced or base structure you are simply choosing one particular custom structure, not a built in one. I don't know if now it is clearer.
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Glenn Posts: 99
23/12/2015
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Gianluca wrote:
A third beta is available.
So, in setting up some command line parameters, I noticed that in the manual section titled "Command line" that the modifier "CRTL" is mentioned. I didn't test if it worked I just spelled it "CTRL" and that worked
In the beta 3 comments at the top of this thread, it gives -cv examples:
Some examples here: -cvfoo1=text -cv%foo2%=text -cv"foo3=text" -cv"%foo foo 4%"=text -cv"%foo foo 5%=text text"
It is clear that the "" have to be around all the stuff with spaces, but don't have to include spaces. That I think I understand.
It is _not_ clear whether variables can be named with % as part of the name. I'm not sure how it could be referenced, or else I don't understand the syntax for referencing such names. I have experimentally determined that -cv"%foo%=bar" does not result in a reference to "%foo%" being expanded. So the manual needs to be more verbose to explain the usefulness of the example, or else the example may be in error?
%BIT% gets expanded in tooltips, with the "%BIT%" gets replaced with "x64-based PC". However, -cv"smhk=C+F2" gets expanded in tooltips, with the % left behind! That is "%smhk%" gets replaced with "%c+f2%". This was surprising... both the % staying around, and the value being lowercase!
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Glenn Posts: 99
23/12/2015
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Gianluca wrote:
A third beta is available.
Maybe your examples were intended to show the use of Windows environment variable values as names for SyMenu variables? Since I started SyMenu from a batch file, that is effectively what I was getting, because Windows does interpret % syntax inside ". When I used -cv"%%foo%%=bar" then the expansion happened, without % being left behind, as they were with -cvfoo=bar.
Should I infer from this that SyMenu variables do not need enclosing % to be expanded? Is that intentional? It might raise havoc with some command lines if text on the command line happened to match a SyMenu variable name (and yes, even if command lines are not presently expanded, I hope they can be someday).
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sl23 Posts: 285
23/12/2015
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Gianluca wrote:
No this is and will be impossible because the menu is always built with a custom structure. When you choose and save advanced or base structure you are simply choosing one particular custom structure, not a built in one. I don't know if now it is clearer.
Er... sorry no, not really any clearer 
It sounds contradictory, but that's probably my interpretation! I haven't had much sleep the last few months! To explain... If the menu is based on custom structures why not allow one custom structure to be saved to html file and be recalled when clicking button?
I'm not trying to push this as personally I will never require it, but thought it could save some users some hassle.
I'm sure if you say it's not possible then that's the case, as I said, probably my poor interpretation! It's fine by me to leave as is, just trying to help improve things a little
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