tcl-mac

[MACTCL] Ditch built-in first Help menu entry?

[Russell O. <ro...@uw...>]

I distribute a cross-platform app that has several help links that I 
manually add to the Help menu, the first of which is called "<app name> 
Help". This works fine on all platforms except MacOS, where I see two 
entries for "<app name> Help", the first of which is shown in a small 
font (I guess the MacOS default for the help menu) which brings up a 
dialog saying that this application does not have any help. The second 
(in the normal menu item font, like all the remaining entries) works as 
expected.

My question is: is there some way to eliminate that first help entry? Or 
is there some way to connect it to my own help (though I'd prefer the 
first, if it's easy to do).

-- Russell

Re: [MACTCL] Ditch built-in first Help menu entry?

[Damon C. <da...@tc...>]

Sent a reply to Russell and didn’t CC the list.

Basically, define a ::tk::mac::ShowHelp proc instead of adding your own menu item. You can find information about various bits of Tk/Mac wackiness here:

http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.6/TkCmd/tk_mac.htm <http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.6/TkCmd/tk_mac.htm>

Damon


> On Oct 28, 2014, at 11:55 AM, Russell Owen <ro...@uw...> wrote:
> 
> I distribute a cross-platform app that has several help links that I 
> manually add to the Help menu, the first of which is called "<app name> 
> Help". This works fine on all platforms except MacOS, where I see two 
> entries for "<app name> Help", the first of which is shown in a small 
> font (I guess the MacOS default for the help menu) which brings up a 
> dialog saying that this application does not have any help. The second 
> (in the normal menu item font, like all the remaining entries) works as 
> expected.
> 
> My question is: is there some way to eliminate that first help entry? Or 
> is there some way to connect it to my own help (though I'd prefer the 
> first, if it's easy to do).
> 
> -- Russell
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Tcl-mac mailing list
> tc...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tcl-mac

Re: [MACTCL] Ditch built-in first Help menu entry?

[Kevin W. <kw...@co...>]

See tk::mac::ShowHelp. That let's you map a proc to the native help menu.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 28, 2014, at 12:55 PM, Russell Owen <ro...@uw...> wrote:
> 
> I distribute a cross-platform app that has several help links that I 
> manually add to the Help menu, the first of which is called "<app name> 
> Help". This works fine on all platforms except MacOS, where I see two 
> entries for "<app name> Help", the first of which is shown in a small 
> font (I guess the MacOS default for the help menu) which brings up a 
> dialog saying that this application does not have any help. The second 
> (in the normal menu item font, like all the remaining entries) works as 
> expected.
> 
> My question is: is there some way to eliminate that first help entry? Or 
> is there some way to connect it to my own help (though I'd prefer the 
> first, if it's easy to do).
> 
> -- Russell
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> Tcl-mac mailing list
> tc...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tcl-mac

Re: [MACTCL] Ditch built-in first Help menu entry?

[Russell O. <ro...@uw...>]

On 10/28/14 10:27 AM, Kevin Walzer wrote:
> See tk::mac::ShowHelp. That let's you map a proc to the native help menu.

Thank you and Damon. That worked fine. I had feared it would be a hassle 
to redirect that command (rather than hide the item) but it turned out 
to be easy and it did the job. (Now if only all help items were shown in 
the same unusual font, but that's a minor cosmetic detail).

-- Russell

Re: [MACTCL] Ditch built-in first Help menu entry?

[Kevin W. <kw...@co...>]

On 10/28/14, 2:43 PM, Russell Owen wrote:
>   (Now if only all help items were shown in
> the same unusual font, but that's a minor cosmetic detail).

The Cocoa help menu uses the same small font size to display all entries 
by default: if they are appearing larger in your menu, could it be that 
you are hard-coding a larger font size?

-- 
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin/Mobile Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
http://www.wtmobilesoftware.com

Re: [MACTCL] Ditch built-in first Help menu entry?

[Russell O. <ro...@uw...>]

On 10/28/14 5:52 PM, Kevin Walzer wrote:
> On 10/28/14, 2:43 PM, Russell Owen wrote:
>>    (Now if only all help items were shown in
>> the same unusual font, but that's a minor cosmetic detail).
>
> The Cocoa help menu uses the same small font size to display all entries
> by default: if they are appearing larger in your menu, could it be that
> you are hard-coding a larger font size?

Good catch. My desire is to allow the user to set the font size for:
- Text widgets
- all other widgets except menu items

I was doing this by setting the following items (in this order) in the 
option database:
- *font to a named font for the generic case
- *Text.font to a named font for Text widgets
- *Menu.font to the original menu font (recorded at startup)

It all looks and works as desired, except for the help menu on MacOS. I 
guess instead of specifying a generic *font I can be more specific (e.g. 
*Label.font and *Entry.font) for the first case and do not set 
*Menu.font; I just worry about missing a category of widgets.

-- Russell

Re: [MACTCL] Ditch built-in first Help menu entry?

[Russell O. <ro...@uw...>]

On 10/30/14 10:09 AM, Russell Owen wrote:
> On 10/28/14 5:52 PM, Kevin Walzer wrote:
>> On 10/28/14, 2:43 PM, Russell Owen wrote:
>>>     (Now if only all help items were shown in
>>> the same unusual font, but that's a minor cosmetic detail).
>>
>> The Cocoa help menu uses the same small font size to display all entries
>> by default: if they are appearing larger in your menu, could it be that
>> you are hard-coding a larger font size?
>
> Good catch. My desire is to allow the user to set the font size for:
> - Text widgets
> - all other widgets except menu items
>
> I was doing this by setting the following items (in this order) in the
> option database:
> - *font to a named font for the generic case
> - *Text.font to a named font for Text widgets
> - *Menu.font to the original menu font (recorded at startup)
>
> It all looks and works as desired, except for the help menu on MacOS. I
> guess instead of specifying a generic *font I can be more specific (e.g.
> *Label.font and *Entry.font) for the first case and do not set
> *Menu.font; I just worry about missing a category of widgets.

Oops. I spoke too soon. If I comment out all attempts to set fonts in 
the option database I still see the menu items that I add to the Help 
menu in the normal menu item font, yet I cannot find any attempt to 
specify the font for menu items (or any other items). Fortunately this 
is easy to live with.

-- Russell