How to Easily Give a Screen Its Own User-Defined Menu

• Microsoft FoxPro for Windows, versions 2.5x, 2.6x
• Microsoft FoxPro for MS-DOS, versions 2.5x, 2.6x
• Microsoft FoxPro for Macintosh, version 2.5x, 2.6a

SUMMARY

This article shows by example how to create a screen and give it an active menu while also keeping the main system menu active. For example, the Trace window has its own menu and is active while the main FoxPro system menu is active.

MORE INFORMATION

For information about how to attach a menu to a Visual FoxPro 3.0 form, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q135517
   TITLE     : How to Attach a Menu to a Form

FoxPro 2.x Instructions

You could create a menu to be included with a screen by hand coding the menu. But it is easier to use FoxPro's menu generator to generate menu code. Then you can identify and copy the appropriate sections of generated code (.MPR), and paste these sections into the screen code (.SCX).

Step-by-Step Example

1. Create a screen file, and give the screen a name in the screen layout.

2. Create a menu to go with the screen by using the menu builder. Then generate it by using the menu generator.

3. Create a #SECTION2 in the setup code of the screen. On the last line of the Setup snippet of your screen, type in the following:

   #SECTION2

4. Copy the "Menu Definitions" section of the generated menu file (the .MPR file) to the line below the #SECTION2 section created in the previous step. But do not copy any of the menu procedure code; this code will be placed in the cleanup code of the screen.

5. Copy the menu procedures labeled on the selection bar to the screen cleanup and procedures section of the screen. From this point on all reference in this article to menu code will refer to the menu code copied to the screen (.SCX) file.

6. In the menu code, replace the first line (SET SYSMENU TO) with "define menu <menu name> in window <screen name>" where menu name is any name you want and screen name is the name you gave the screen in the screen layout dialog box.

   For example, if the menu generator generated the following first two lines of code:

         SET SYSMENU TO
         SET SYSMENU AUTOMATIC
   

   Replace the above lines with the following;

         SET SYSMENU AUTOMATIC
         DEFINE MENU mymenu IN WINDOW test
   

7. In the menu code, replace all occurrences of _MSYSMENU with your menu name. For example, one line of the menu code might look like this:

         DEFINE PAD _qt00iyosr OF _MSYSMENU PROMPT "file" COLOR SCHEME 3
   

   Change the _MSYSMENU to your menu name (for example, mymenu):

         DEFINE PAD _qt00iyosr OF mymenu PROMPT "file" COLOR SCHEME 3
   

8. Change the following lines:

         ON SELECTION BAR 1 OF file ;
                      DO _qt00iyovc ;
                      IN LOCFILE(...
   
      To this:
   
         ON SELECTION BAR 1 OF file ;
                      DO _qt00iyovc
   
   

9. Add the following line to the ON WINDOW ACTIVATE clause of the screen code:

   ACTIVATE MENU mymenu NOWAIT

10. Generate the screen code, and execute the .SPR file.