the Menu Editor

Item Drawing Screen
I his is the heart of the AMOS Professional Menu Editor, and it is the screen where the exact appearance of each menu item is defined. All menu items are constructed from a list of 21 different graphics elements, which correspond to the embedded menu instructions detailed in Chapter 6.5 of this User Manual. Each of these elements can be edited completely separately from one another, so that menus can be modified after they have been created very quickly and very simply.

The top left-hand section of this screen is the Current Item Window, where all drawing operations are controlled.

The top right-hand section is the Work Screen, which holds a picture of the element being edited, as it will appear in the final menu. Below this Work Screen is a horizontal bar. There is a small panel on the left of this bar, which shows the current fill pattern. The rest of the bar is a font window, showing the current style and size of text being used.

The palette window occupies a horizontal bar across the whole width of this screen, and the layout of this is explained below.

The lower section of the screen contains the four menus used to control the drawing operations, headed from left to right, Draw functions, Settings, Object and Misc. Dialogue messages and comments appear in this line of menu headings, during the menu editing process.

Here is a guided tour of all the options in the four Item Drawing Screen menus, as they appear from left to right:

Draw functions
Colours for drawing an element must be selected from the horizontal Palette Window. The current ink colour is marked by the number 1, and the current paper setting is shown by the number 2. To change these settings, click on the top of half of the palette for the ink colour, and the bottom half of the palette to select a new paper colour. Note that the outline colour is set to the same choice as the current ink setting. Elements are drawn as follows:

• Select an element to be defined using the Object menu, which is explained below.
• Click on your choice of one of the drawing functions and move the mouse cursor into the Current Item Window.
• Click the left mouse button, keep it held down and drag it to create the shape of the element. When the mouse button is released, the object that has just been created will be assigned to the current brush automatically.
• Paste the current object into position by clicking on the left mouse button again.
• If the result is not satisfactory, erase the current brush setting by pressing right mouse button while the mouse pointer is over the Work Screen.
• Because each element in the menu can only be assigned to a single object from this Drawing menu, you must increment the element number before adding to your design, otherwise the existing element will be completely replaced.