DADiSP menus are simply ASCII text files, so you can create a custom DADiSP menu with any text editor. For example, under Windows, you can use the Notepad editor, while in UNIX, you can use vi or emacs. An easy way to start a text editor is to select the Tools -> SPL -> New SPL file pull down menu. When you invoke the menu, DADiSP automatically supplies the OK and Cancel buttons, as well as the system GUI look and feel.
There are three main types of DADiSP menus: menulists, summary display and report boxes, and dialog boxes (also called panels). Each of these types of menus will be discussed in detail in this section. Menulists and summary display boxes are the simplest forms of DADiSP menus, while dialog boxes (panel menus) can be quite complex.
DADiSP menu files accept optional control characters that control the behavior of a menu. When you create your menu file, you can control any of the following with menu keywords and key characters:
textual displays in the menu
menu type: display, menulist, dialog box, tabbed dialog
default values
associated help files
menu position
The menu keywords begin with the @ character and are specified at the beginning of the menu file, as described in the following sections.
For the first menu example, create a text file, simple.men, with the contents:
Maximum~max
Minimum~min
This file is a valid DADiSP menu file that lets the user run either the MIN or MAX commands, and displays the results in the status line at the bottom of the screen. Make sure that you include a newline (carriage return) after the last line containing text in the menu file.
Invoke the menu from the DADiSP command line with:
menufile("simple.men")
The menu appears as: