Configuring Apollo means telling it which items (applications, documents, desk accessories, control panels and folders) you want to have in its menus. You also use the configuration dialog to create, delete and rename groups and to move items between the groups and the main menu. If you want applications to have document submenus, you create them in the configuration dialog too.
Apollo’s configuration submenu looks like this:
 
The configuration dialog has several “pages”, each of which deals with adding a different type of item to Apollo’s menus. You can choose which page is initially shown by selecting one of the items from the configuration submenu (of course, once the dialog is on the screen, you can move easily from page to page anyway). Choosing “Configure” or even “Apollo” is the same as choosing “Applications”. If you are not running system 7, “Desk accessories”, “Control Panels” and “Folders” will be unavailable.
The configuration dialog is large and, at first sight, rather complex. However, it’s really very simple to use. It can be divided into several parts.
At the top is a popup menu which lets you switch between the dialog’s pages. It is exactly the same as the configuration submenu shown above, but it always appears in the system font. At the bottom is a line on which messages appear.
The items on the left are similar to the ones you see in the standard “Open…” dialog:
 
The popup menu at the top, the scrolling list (called the file list) and the four buttons work in exactly the way you are used to (if you are not running system 7, the Desktop button will be called Drive). Click Done when you have finished making changes. The file list shows only folders and items of the type being configured. The “Show all files” checkbox lets you put documents which do not belong to an application into that application’s submenu, which is sometimes useful.
In the centre of the dialog is a scrolling list (the menu list) which contains items which are of the type being configured, whichever of Apollo’s menus they appear in. (The exception to this rule occurs when you are configuring documents: only first-class documents appear in the menu list. See below for a discussion of first- and second-class documents).
 
The group in which each item resides appears in small type underneath the item’s name. If the group is active (like the Comms group at the top), a bullet appears next to its name. (For a discussion of active and passive groups, see the section on groups later in this chapter). To the left of the group name is the group popup: clicking on this downward-pointing arrow pops up a menu containing all the groups you have defined and choosing a group moves the item to that group. A pseudo-group called “Main menu” represents Apollo’s main menu.
To add an item to the menu list (and hence to Apollo’s main menu), select it in the file list on the left and click Add (the Open button in the illustration changes to Add), or double-click it in the file list. To remove an item, select it in the menu list and click Remove, or double-click its name in the menu list. Removing an application deletes its document submenu, if any, and is not undoable. To add an item to a group, you must first add it to the main menu and then move it to the group.
At the right-hand side of the dialog are two buttons and a dotted box. The buttons are Groups, which takes you to the dialog where you may create, delete and rename groups (see later) and Build group. When you click the Build group button, a group is created with the same name as the current folder (the name of the current folder appears in the popup menu above the file list) and all items of the current type are added to it. If a group of that name already exists, the items in the current folder are merged with its contents. You can use this button to create a group containing your control panels, for example.
The contents of the dotted box vary, depending on what kind of item you are configuring. It is these contents that form the “pages” of the configuration dialog.
 
If you are configuring applications, the box looks like this. The scrolling list (the document list) shows the documents which will appear in the application’s submenu. To add a document to an application’s submenu, first select the application in the menu list. The file list will then show not only applications, but also documents belonging to the selected application (if you check the “Show all files” box, all files are shown). If you double-click on a document in the file list, or select it and click Add, it will be added to the application’s submenu and will appear in the document list. If you double-click an application, however, it will be added to the menu list: to add an application to another application’s submenu (so the second application will open the first as a document), hold down the option key as you double-click. To remove a document, select it in the document list and click “Remove document”, or double-click it in the document list. The application’s submenu is created automatically when the first document is placed into it, and deleted when the last document is removed. Clicking Settings… transfers you to the Application settings dialog, described in its own chapter later in this document.
 
If you are configuring desk accessories, the box looks like this. To add a desk accessory to the main menu, first locate the file containing it in the file list and double-click it. The desk accessories it contains will then appear in the desk accessory list inside the dotted box. You can add each one to the menu by selecting it and clicking “Add to menu”, or by double-clicking on its name. If the Auto-add box is checked, all the desk accessories in a file will be added to the menu as soon as the file is opened, which saves some time. Unlike the system 7 Finder, Apollo can run desk accessories from within the old-style Font/DA Mover suitcases as well as from their own files (but only one DA from a given suitcase can be active at one time).
If you are configuring control panels, the box is empty.
 
If you are configuring folders, the box looks like this. The upper button shows the name of the folder which is selected in the file list, and the lower button shows the name of the folder whose contents are shown in the file list (that is, the parent of the first). You can add either of them to the menu by clicking the appropriate button. The five check boxes show the submenu settings for the folder which is selected in the menu list. You can choose whether any folder has a submenu and, if it has, what kind of items will appear in it. If you check only the “applications” box, for example, Apollo will filter out all other sorts of file, keeping the submenus shorter and easier to work with. The selection criteria apply to all the submenus of the folder’s own, first-level menu as well.
 
Finally, if you are configuring documents, the box looks like this. Documents in Apollo’s menus are of two types. Second-class documents have already been discussed. They live only in applications’ document submenus and selecting one opens the application with that document. They cannot be moved from one menu to another. First-class documents, in contrast, are treated exactly like applications, desk accessories, etc. They live in the main menu or in group submenus and can be moved freely between them. They have an associated application, which is used to open them when they are selected. There is a small memory overhead for this convenience. To add a document to the main menu, simply double-click it in the file list. Apollo will then do its best to select the appropriate application to use to open the document and show its name in the dotted box. (Apollo does this by scanning through all the applications in its menus. If it finds a match, it will use that application. Under system 7, Apollo will also scan quickly through all the available disks to try to find an appropriate application.) If Apollo can’t find a suitable application, it will display <not yet chosen> in the dotted box and will ask you to find an application the first time you choose the document from its menu. To change a document’s application, select the document in the menu list, select the new application in the file list and click “Change application to”.
Groups
Groups are a very useful feature of Apollo. They allow you to keep in its menus many items which you rarely use without cluttering up the main menu, forcing it to scroll and making it difficult to use.
Groups can be of two types: active and passive. A passive group is merely an organisational convenience: you can select and launch any of its members, but selecting the group name itself, in the main menu, has no effect (this isn’t quite true: if a group has the same name as one of its members, selecting the group name has the same effect as selecting the member).
Sometimes, though, you will have a set of applications which you like to use together. If, for example, you were writing a scientific paper, you might want to run your graphing program, your drawing program and your word processor at the same time, and it would be tedious to start up each one individually. Apollo simplifies this greatly: simply create a group, put each of the applications into it (and attach documents to them if you like) and make the group active, by clicking the “Make active/passive” button in the groups dialog. Subsequently, if you select the group name in the main menu, Apollo will start up each of the applications in that group. If an application in the group has a document submenu, the first document in the menu will be opened. You are not limited to applications: an active group can also contain desk accessories, control panels, folders or documents, or any combination of these. Of course, you can use the group just like a passive group if you wish, by selecting one of the members directly.
To configure Apollo’s groups, click the Groups button in the configuration dialog and the dialog below will appear.
 
The list at the upper left contains all the groups you have already defined: active groups are shown with bullets next to their names. To create a new group, type its name, which will appear in the box at the bottom, and click Add button (or hit return). To delete a group, select it and click Remove, or double-click its name. If the group you are deleting is not empty, an alert will appear, giving you the options of cancelling the deletion, deleting the group’s contents along with the group or moving the contents up to the main menu. To rename a group, select it and click Rename. When you have finished altering groups, click Done.
To make an active group passive, select it and click “Make passive”. If you select a passive group, the title of that button changes to “Make active”, and clicking it makes the group active. The “Front item” popup menu is available when you have selected an active group. It contains all the members of that group, and controls which one will be the active application when all the group’s contents have been started.
