Suppose you have several programmers on your staff (or contract programmers) have written Progress programs for unique situations or problems you encounter in the course of running your newspaper. By selecting Custom Menu, you can customize Circulation to make these software tools readily accessible to your staff via menu option selection. This section documents how to create these menu options. Once defined, select Custom Menu to execute these menu options.
Menu items come in three varieties: TopItem, DropItem, and PullItem.
TopItem
These are strip menu items. Examples shown below are Accounting, Setup, Utilities, and so on.
DropItem
These items drop down from a TopItem. Examples shown below are Account, Audience, Subscription/Address, and so on.
PullItem
These items pull laterally from a DropItem. Examples shown below are Rate Check, Draw Export, Account Activation, and so on.
To set up menu items for custom programs:
Select Custom Menu from the Utilities menu to display the Custom Menu. This menu will look different, depending on what customer menu items you have already set up (an example shown below).
Note that Custom Menu items you set up will be accessible via the strip menu. Thus, the strip menu serves two purposes: (a) it is your means (via Setup) to define custom menu items, and (b) it is where custom menu items are selected.
Select Setup and use the setup keys displayed to insert the new menu item. For example, to position a new menu called Special in front of Setup, we would highlight Setup and press F3.
Each TopItem, DropItem, or PullItem must be added separately. Items can also be rearranged: typing “+” moves a highlighted option to the right (or down) and typing “-” moves it to the left (or up). Press Enter to edit a highlighted item.
Once the menu item has been inserted, it needs to be defined. The menu name is specified, and the menu is item linked to a program or declared to be a submenu.
To define the menu item:
After you insert the menu item, a window will open with fields for defining the item.
Complete the following fields.
TOP ITEM DROP ITEM PULL ITEM
open (20)
Enter the name of the menu item, along with the drop item and top item it belongs to, if applicable. In our example, Special is a top item, so we would enter “Special” in Top Item and leave the two other fields blank. If, at a later time, we put in a drop item called Draw under Special, we would enter “Special” in Top Item and “Draw” in Drop Item.
Note: If Special is set up as an action type of “menu” but no items exist, it will not show up once you are out of Setup mode. Special appears again when you are in Setup mode.
ACTION
predefined
Indicate the purpose of this menu item. There are several possible purposes: Editor: the item will exit to the Circulation main menu. Leave: the item will exit to the Circulation main menu. menu: the item is a menu containing further options. None: the item will only display (you may leave the title blank and use this for spacing). Program: the item will execute a PROGRESS program. UNIX: the item will execute a UNIX command.
OBJECT
open (60)
Make an entry here if the action type of this menu option is “program”. Enter the path and PROGRESS program name (with the “.p” extension). If the action type of this menu is ““unix”, enter a UNIX command to execute.
SECURITY
setup
EXPERT CODE
open (3)
If this menu option executes a Circulation function that is associated with an expert code, enter the expert code (without the slash “/”).
SEQUENCE NO, ADD ON ID
—
Ignore these fields.
HELP
open (64)
Enter the text of the one-line help message that will appear at the bottom of the screen when this menu option is highlighted.
An example of how you would define the menu item Special is shown below.
Add other menu items, using the procedures to insert and define custom items given here. For example, you might define two drop items, Draw and Credit Status, to go on the newly created Special menu.
Select Exit to exit to the Custom Menu. You must Exit to the Custom Menu in order to activate newly defined menu options.
Enter a security code that governs the use of this menu option (leave blank if there is no security). See in the Setup Manual for more information about security.
