Panorama > Procedures > Menus
 
helpmenu(
helpmenu(
TITLE
,
OPTION
,
VALUE
)

The helpmenu( function creates a help menu (see Live Menus).

Parameters

This function has three parameters:

title – title of the menu. If this parameter is omitted, it will default to Help.

option – one or more options that modify the menu. See below for descriptions of each option. The option name can be specified in either upper or lower case.

value – the value for the option specified in the previous parameter.

Description

This function creates a help menu from scratch (see Live Menus). In its simplest form, the function has a single parameter, the title of the menu item. This example creates a menu named Help.

helpmenu("Help")+
    menuitem("Help Book")

Menus created with this function are special. In addition to the menu items you provide, this menu will also have a special Spotlight like area at the top of the menu. You can type into this area to search through and activate menu items.

You should only use the helpmenu( function if you want to create a completely custom Help menu, completely different from the normal Panorama Help menu. If you want to have a variation on the standard Help menu (for example adding or removing an item or two), you should use the standardhelpmenu( function with the “array hacking” technique.

If you use either the helpmenu( or standardhelpmenu( functions, make sure that you disable the help menu in your menubar statement. This can be done using the -help option, as shown here:

filemenubar "all -help",
    helpmenu("New Help")+
       menuitem("Help Book")

You should never have two help menus in the menu bar. Panorama will let you do this, but only one of the menus will have the special Spotlight search area.

Help Menu Appearance Options

In addition to the title parameter, you can also specify one or more option/value pairs that modify the menu appearance, like this:

helpmenu(title,option1,value1,option2,value2,option3,value3)

Here is an example that creates an Oceans submenu that is displayed in blue, using the font Futura Condensed.

helpmenu("Assistance","FONT","Futura Condensed","COLOR","0000FF")+
    menuitem("Atlantic")+
    menuitem("Pacific")+
    menuitem("Indian")

For more information about menu appearance options see the menu( function.

See Also

History

VersionStatusNotes
10.2.4NewNew in this version.