hierDA 0.9984 Release Notes: (first and only draft)
Changes since ╥spirit of ╒83╙:
The pop-up menu-bar-if-you-click-on-the-desktop feature now works under MultiFinder, even if the Finder is the top-most application.
hierDA╒s control panel options include one named ╥Only if shift is down╙, which means that command-keys can╒t be used to invoke DA╒s pop-out menus unless the shift-key is down. This is so that if you type command-whatever in an application thinking it will do something, but that menu item isn╒t available, you won╒t go launching a DA instead. If this version, this has been expanded to mean use the DAs╒ menus if either the shift, option, or control keys is down.
When using an AppleTalk-intensive utility such as InBox, occasionally hard drives won╒t appear on the desktop when they ought to. This version of hierDA corrects that.
Applications which have an apple menu with absolutely nothing in them used to crash if you clicked in the menu bar. Now they don╒t.
Sometimes the DiskTop submenu contained a bunch of garbage at the end; it won╒t anymore.
Changes since ╥spirit of ╒79╙:
A nasty bug that manifested itself in the first application run after booting, if you were running under Suitcase and not under MultiFinder, has been squashed. This is most commonly known as the ╥Remember? DA╙ bug, since it occured mainly if you had the Remember? DA/INIT combo.
The docs used to say that you could use option to set which cdev would come up as first by default in the Control Panel. Actually, you can╒t, and this has been corrected. Miscellaneous other typos were corrected also, and info regarding hierDA 1.0 was added:
THERE IS NOT NOW AND NEVER WILL BE A SOLID hierDA 1.0!!! I made a version named 1.0 a long time ago and thought that all the people I╒d given it to had destroyed it. Apparently they hadn╒t, and a copy resurfaced on GEnie recently. VERSION 1.0 IS VERY BUGGY AND YOU SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM IT AT ALL COSTS.
WHEN I FINISH WORKING ALL THE BUGS OUT OF THIS RELEASE, I╒LL DISTRIBUTE IT AS 1.1.
<enough of that..>
The pop-up menu-bar-if-you-click-on-the-desktop feature now works under MultiFinder, unless the Finder is on top, in which case it doesn╒t. (this is so you can select things on the desktop.) Unfortunately this means that hierDA will probably break under System 7.0; oh well.
The main hierDA patch has been significantly sped up, so those of you using Don Brown╒s EZ-Menus INIT and those of you without 68020 or better processors won╒t feel bogged down.
Occasionally when you clicked on the menu bar hierDA would put up its pop-up menu; this has been fixed.
The ╥thumb╙ (the little white square in the scroll bar) of hierDA╒s cdev has been made active; try it and see what you think. It is a violation of the user-interface guidelines, but it was fun to do...
The option that allowed command-keys to activate hierDA menus has been altered slightly; if you select ╥only with shift-key down╙ hierDA will now also allow access if the option-key is down. This is so that you can put option-command-equivalents in custom menus. If you don╒t understand this, don╒t worry about it. Eventually a better way of explaining this stuff will occur to me╔╔
This release has a really good chance of becoming 1.1.
Changes since ╥spirit of ╒78╙:
A severe bug that manifested itself mainly in MultiFinder 6.1b7 has been fixed. Previously if you had any DAs longer than 31 letters (including spaces) hierDA would crash; this included the ╥Set Aside╙ item under MF 6.1b7 which tended to be that long.. This has been fixed.
Under 9978, a DA which supported command-key equivalents for a menu it put up (such as Acta or miniWriter or McSink, etc.) wouldn╒t work right: any command-key you used would act as if you had used it twide. This has been fixed.
Under 9978, a DA such as McSink which used hierarchical menus would appear under the Apple menu with its first-level menu only. THIS WILL NOT EVER BE FIXED. However, if the McSink DA was open the hierarchical menus WOULD appear, but selecting them had no effect. This has been fixed.
Under all previous hierDAs, there was no good way to use hierDA to open up a DA such as McSink to do anything useful.... Under 9979 and in the future, hierDA supports MENU subID 31 resources which will map to real menus; this is hard to explain and even harder to get working, so let me give a simple example: If you add a menu of subID 31 to McSink using ResEdit (if you don╒t feel comfortale using ResEdit skip this note), and the items are ╥Open...╙, ╥New╙, ╥List files╙, and ╥Quit╙, then that menu will show up in the apple menu instead of the normal one that hierDA puts there. (as long as you have custom submenus turned on, of course.) If you select one of these items then hierDA will first open up McSink, then search through McSink╒s menu looking for those items. In the future I hope that Dave McWherter (McSink╒s author) will see fit to include such a subID 31 resource so this will be available to everyone without having to go through ResEdit; we╒ll see....
Changes since ╥spirit of ╒77╙:
The bug that crashed Microsoft Word 4.0 and a few other products has been quashed, and a potential bug which would occur when switching to a different system disk has been eliminated. This release has a good chance of becoming 1.0.
Changes since ╥Spirit of ╘76╙:
The old hierDA╒s general submenu selection feature didn╒t work with some versions of MultiFinder. Also, the old hierDA was somewhat naive about the System Heap and just kindof assumed everything was OK. The new hierDA makes sure there╒s at least 4K of space in the system heap for other programs beside itself. Hopefully this will solve a few of the bugs that have been reported. Finally, the strange characters that sometimes showed up on the left hand side of the Control Panel submenu have been eliminated.
hierDA 0.9977 is an almost total re-write of hierDA, an INIT/cdev for adding hierarchical menus to the Apple menu. Rather than describe the features of hierDA, which are listed in the cdev, I╒ll try to explain some of the more technical changes and bugs fixed in this release:
(1) Menus are now stored in the system heap rather than the application heap.
What this means is that hierDA╒s menus are stored in a section of memory which stays around between application launches, rather than being stored in the section of memory which exists for applications only and gets blown away every time a program is launched. This has three effects: First, under MultiFinder, the menus are in only one place in memory rather than being in several different places, once for each application. Second, the new hierDA is faster, since it has no need to re-construct its menus every time a program is started. Third, some applications (certain versions of Microsoft products) get upset when foreign data appears in their heaps, and this doesn╒t happen anymore.
(2) hierDA menus are inserted ╥on the fly╙ rather than existing in the menu structure always.
This is basically a compatibility issue. MacApp 1.11 and earlier assumed that all menus were menus that it had created, and as program initialization, it disabled them all. This meant that all hierDA menus were inaccessible from within MacApp. On very early versions of hierDA, it also meant that MacApp programs crashed because of a numbering scheme problem.
Unfortunately it also means that there is a little bit of a delay between when you click on the menu bar and when the menus actually start appearing. If this is a problem, please let me know; I can speed this up a bit if need be. *** version 9983 has a speed-up in it. Is it still too slow? ***
(3) Changes to options settings in the hierDA cdev take effect immediately. For example, if you turn off all the menu settings on the left hand side, and pull down the Apple menu, none of the hierDA menus will appear. On previous versions, the settings only took effect after programs were launched.
(4) hierDA command-key equivalents no longer override command-key equivalents in hierarchical menus of some applications, and turning off the ╥Command-keys enabled╙ option no longer disables the command-key equivalents of hierarchical menus is some applications.
(5) hierDA now works properly with Font/DA Juggler.
The same fix that applies to FDAJ also fixes problems with MultiClip. If you use FDAJ, be sure to re-name hierDA to ╥DA Menuz╙ or some such so that hierDA loads BEFORE FDAJ does. This will ensure that menus are properly matched to their DA owners. In any case, loading hierDA in the wrong order no longer crashes the Mac, as it did before.
Actually, this release of hierDA is named DA Menuz because of FDAJ.
(6) hierDA under MultiFinder now opens up the right cdev.
Under the old hierDA, if you changed the number of cdevs in the System Folder, and then tried to use hierDA to open one up, the wrong one got opened. This was because hierDA remembered which one you picked by its position in hierDA╒s list. If that list changed between the time you picked the cdev and when Control Panel opened, the cdev would appear in a different position in the list and hierDA got confused.
-- Known anomalies --
(Anomalies are things that are so minor that no-one cares and no-one notices that they exist.)
Under MultiFinder, the test to see if you╒ve hit the little icon in the upper right hand corner only tests the horizontal position of the mouse. This is fine if you╒re using the menu bar normally, but if you use the pop-up menu bar feature, it gets a little weird: any time you try to use the pop-up menu bar with mouse directly underneath the icon, you╒ll switch layers instead! This is a bug in all versions of hierDA that provided a pop-up menu bar.
Under newer versions of hierDA, the pop-up menu bar is more active under MultiFinder, and this means that if you click on the desktop directly under the little MultiFinder icon, you╒ll switch layers!
-- Known bugs --
None.
-- Other issues --
I╒ve received about 150 letters about hierDA so far. Many people just write to report bugs, and others send a dollar and a disk for a new hierDA. Now, the old hierDA said I╒d send the new hierDA IMMEDIATELY; I thought I would be making new releases about every two months or so, etc. The problem is, 9967 was stable enough that there wasn╒t much need to make a new version (9961 was pretty buggy). So what should I do? Send people a version of hierDA they already have? Or send them a new version when I got that done? I opted for the latter, thinking I would get around to making one within a few weeks anyway... Yeah, Real Soon Now. That╒s the ticket....
Well, if anyone had been paying attention, the new version of hierDA that I was waiting to send would have been named to a vaporware list. When it finally gets released, it╒ll be about a year after I thought it would and about 16 months after the previous version. And if someone had really been paying attention, they might have gotten me for mail fraud... Fortunately that hasn╒t happened. Patience, please - when 1.1 comes out, sometime in July, it will be sent to everyone, along with the goodies I mention. Those who have sent checks have not had them cashed.
Oh yes, and one more thing: I╒ve gotten a lot of extra cash from a few people - the most often non-1-dollar amount being sent was ten bucks, and I╒ve gotten as much as twenty. My favorite has got to be the Canadian two-dollar bill I got (Note: Canada╒s money has a picture of Queen Elizabeth on it.) with a note that said: ╥This is the queen of someone else╒s country. I don╒t know why she is on _our_ money!╙ Cute, BB.
Anyway, the question is should hierDA be shareware? Originally it was, but I talked with a friend of mine from Apple and he said the shareware market was too crowded. Suddenly even the most piddly little software that any good programmer could write in his sleep was being offered for shareware sale. And the number of good programs offered in the public-domain was shrinking rapidly. I said hierDA was not something I wrote in my sleep. He said ╥So? You don╒t need the money, and knowing your ego you╒d be happy just to know there were a ton of people using it.╙ He was right. But on the other hand one of the reasons hierDA took so long to get from ╘67 to ╘77 is that I don╒t get anything from hierDA and I have to worry about a real job. And going from the number of letters I╒ve gotten and the number which said I should charge for it, it seems like a good idea. What do you think?
-- Reply CIS 73177,1404 EMAIL or on MACPRO, or by USMAIL. Thanx. --
-- Trivia --
jbx is spelled jbx and is not spelled JBX. hierDA is not spelled heirDA.
hierDA is pronounced ╥here-duh╙ and everyone in the world is mispronouncing it and sometimes when I correct people they say I╒m the one who╒s wrong because Desk Accessories are pronounced dee-ays and hierarchical isn╒t pronounced here-ark-ick-ul, it╒s pronounced higher-ark-ick-al. Therefore, they say, hierDA is pronounced ╥higher-dee-ay╙. That╒s a good line of reasoning, but what they don╒t realize is that this is English, and nothing that makes any sense was ever used to determine pronounciation. In English, pronounciation rules are something like ╥well, the guy who first started using that word was German and that╒s pretty much the way you╒d pronounce it in German. Besides, that way it╒s less syllables.╙
hierDA is pronounced ╥here-duh╙.
Following the same line of reasoning you might try to pronounce jbx in German and then take the b out to make it less syllables, and it would sound like ╥Yoattex╙ Again, this is English, and there are never reasons for things, and jbx is pronounced jay-bee-ex, and ╥DA Menuz╙ is pronounced dee-ay-men-use.
And the reason I use jbx and not my real name is that you guys can╒t pronounce hierDA right, so you╒d never pronounce ╥JÜrg╙ right and you might not even pronounce ╥Brown╙ right.
And no, the x isn╒t an initial of mine - only j and b are.
