The Menu Item
Main Characteristics of Menu Item Objects
Menu item objects deliver both the visual and behavioral characteristics of menu objects. Menu items can be owned directly by the menu. In this case they appear on the menu “bar”. A menu item owned by the menu can itself own other menu items. This enables menu lists to be constructed. Even menu items in a list can own other menu items. This enables “cascading” menu structures to be constructed. Menus thus provide a flexible mechanism for enabling the application end-user to control the execution flow through an application. Although the selection of a particular menu item is generally interpreted by the application program, many predefined system actions can also be associated with menu items. Menu items can also be defined to exhibit the “On/Off” binary state condition. To inspect the attributes supported by the painter for menu item objects, display the Edit Menu Item dialog by double clicking on the menu item. The Zim language includes a suite of commands for dynamically modifying both the visual and behavioral characteristics of menu item objects.