Advanced Usage

Operation with Modifier Keys

If you hold the option key as you release the mouse button over a menu item representing a folder, then the folder will not be opened, but it will be added to the “Recent folders” submenu.  This can be used to get temporary convenient access to a deeply nested folder.

If you hold the option key as you release the mouse button over a menu item representing a file, then OtherMenu will attempt to open the document with the foreground application, rather than the application that created the document.  For instance, if you want to open a SimpleText file with ResEdit rather than SimpleText, you can bring ResEdit to the front and then hold the option key as you select the document with OtherMenu.

Selecting an OtherMenu external with the shift key will bring up an about box or preferences dialog for the external.

Configuring the Menu

The contents of OtherMenu’s menu is determined by the contents of the OtherMenu Folder, a subfolder of the System Folder, just as the contents of the Apple menu is determined by the contents of the Apple Menu Items folder.  Files and aliases placed in the OtherMenu Folder become OtherMenu menu items.  You can insert folders, and aliases of folders and volumes, to create submenus up to 5 levels deep.

Although in general there is an exact correspondence between the contents of a folder and its corresponding submenu, I have made a few exceptions for convenience:

• You can modify the order of menu items by adding prefixes to the names of the files or folders. If a prefix has exactly 3 characters, ending in a right parenthesis but not containing a left parenthesis, then it will affect the order but be invisible in the menu.  (This scheme is a slight generalization of one used in FinderPop.)

• To make a dividing line in the menu, create a folder with any name ending in “-***”.

• To suppress the submenu for a folder or folder alias, append “-!!X” to its name.  (This idea is also borrowed from FinderPop.)

OtherMenu’s menu will appear just as the contents of the OtherMenu Folder appear in “Name” view in Finder, alphabetically, by level.  For example, if the contents of the OtherMenu Folder look like this,

then the menu will look like this:

It is possible to make a menu item (alias, document, or folder) appear only when a certain application is in the foreground.  You do this by adding a suffix consisting of “<” followed by the application’s 4-character creator code.  The Specialize external makes this easy.  If you use the specialization suffix together with the “-***” suffix or the “-!!X” suffix, the specialization suffix must come last.

When you are rearranging a menu using these tricks, be aware that OtherMenu will not instantly update the menu when you rename an item within the folder.  However, OtherMenu does notice when you add or remove an item.  Therefore, you can make OtherMenu notice changes by creating an empty folder within the folder you are modifying, and then you can immediately trash the empty folder.

General Preferences

The “Show startup icon” checkbox determines whether OtherMenu displays an icon during the startup process.

The “Off when At Ease but not Finder is running” option disables OtherMenu when At Ease is running (even in the background) but Finder is not running.

The “Warn on launch in tight memory” option shows a warning dialog if you launch an application when there is not enough memory to give the application its preferred amount.  If this is not checked, the application may be launched in its minimum amount of memory without warning.

To set the key that triggers the “instant info” feature, click on the rectangle to the right of “Instant info key:” and, while holding the mouse button, press a key.  You can use either a character key like “i” or a modifier key like control.  However, it would not be a good idea to use the command or shift key for this purpose.

Menu Preferences

The “Menus cached” control determines how many submenus will be cached; higher values get you speedier response at the expense of some system memory.  If you check the option to “update cache in background”, then OtherMenu will periodically make sure that the main menu and first level of submenus are up to date.  You may not want to use this feature if you have a hard disk driver that spins down the disk when inactive.

The three “Menu Position” radio buttons determine where the menu will appear: to the left of the help menu (in systems earlier than Mac OS 8), just left of the application menu, or to the right of the application menu.  If you have other extensions that install system menus, their relative positions may depend upon the order in which the extensions load at startup time.  A change to this setting takes effect after a restart.

If you uncheck “Menu title is an icon” then the menu title becomes “Other”.  Changing this setting when the menu is at far right may cause some misalignment problems in the menu bar, which will be corrected by a restart.

The delay settings affect the behavior of submenus, and affect all software, not just OtherMenu.  The “appearance delay” allows you to drag down a menu without submenus appearing and disappearing as you go past them.  The “disappearance delay” helps you drag diagonally from a menu item that owns a submenu to an item within the submenu, without the submenu disappearing.  These parameters are also affected by Carlos Weber’s MenuTuner control panel, but OtherMenu maintains the new values actively instead of changing the standard values in PRAM.  The numbers are in units of  approximately 1/60 seconds.  Note that since the change takes effect immediately, you can try it out on the menu before dismissing the dialog.

If you use mount folders from a file server running Windows NT, you may notice that the files appear in random order.  You can cure this by turning on the option to sort remote menus.  If you use the Natural Order extension, you may want to turn on the option to sort all menus.

Volume Items Preferences

OtherMenu can maintain menu items for volumes (floppies, CD-ROMs, hard disks, etc.) that are mounted on the desktop by creating and deleting aliases to each volume.  This feature may be turned on and off with the “Maintain volume items” checkbox.

Below the label “Volume items folder:”, in smaller type, you should see either the path to a folder, or the words “(This folder has not been defined)”.  Use the “Set Folder” button to respecify this folder.  If you set this folder to be the OtherMenu Folder, then volumes items will appear in OtherMenu’s main menu, as shown in the menu pictures above.  To make a submenu of volumes, choose a subfolder of the OtherMenu Folder.

You can specify a prefix of up to 4 characters that will be added to the names of all volume menu items, in order to group and position them in the menu.  If you like, this can be one of the invisible prefixes mentioned in the earlier section on configuring the menu.

Finally, there are checkboxes by which you can specify that volume items should be accumulated, rather than being automatically deleted when the volumes are unmounted.  (If there is an individual item that you wish to protect from automatic deletion, you can simply lock that alias using Finder or the File Info external.)

Recent Items Preferences

OtherMenu can maintain folders of aliases to recently used applications, folders, and documents.  This feature may be turned on and off with the “Maintain recent items” checkbox.

More precisely, the recent applications folder records applications and desk accessories.  The recent documents folder records other files that have been opened using OtherMenu, or by double-clicking in the Finder, or by selection in a directory dialog.  A folder is recorded as a recent folder if you opened it using OtherMenu or if you selected a file inside it using a directory dialog.

Among the things not recorded as recent items are folders opened in the Finder, control panels opened in the Finder, applications in the Startup Items folder, and documents double-clicked in a THINK C or Metrowerks C project file.

You specify the names and locations of these folders using “Set Folder” buttons, as in the case of the the volume items folder described above.  Unlike the volume items folder, you should not set the recent items folders equal to the OtherMenu Folder.  This is because recent items have no prefix to identify them.

Items chosen from OtherMenu’s main menu will not be recent menu items because they are readily accessible.  You can choose the number of items you would like OtherMenu to maintain in each recent items folder with the “Maximum recent items” control; up to 50 are allowed. You can have OtherMenu automatically delete all items from previous sessions with the “Clear recent items at startup” checkbox.

If you use System 7.5 or later, you may prefer to turn off OtherMenu’s Recent Items feature and use the Recent Applications and Recent Documents folders supplied by Apple’s software.  But note that you can put aliases to these folders into your Other menu, and then you can use these recent items within directory dialogs.

Menu Font Preferences

Using these pop-up menus, you can set the font used in OtherMenu’s menu.  The size setting 0 means the standard size for the system font.  In U.S. systems, the system font is Chicago 12 or Charcoal 12.

You can also assign a style, or combination of styles, to folders, aliases, or other files.  Note that an alias to a folder or disk counts as both an alias and a folder, so both styles will apply.

About FKEYs

An FKEY is a small program without a full user interface that performs a simple task and quits.  When you press command-shift-3 to take a screen snapshot, you are executing an FKEY installed in the System file.  You can place FKEY files, and aliases to FKEY files, in the OtherMenu Folder, and use the menu to execute them.  Such files should have file type 'FKEY', and contain exactly one resource of type 'FKEY', plus possibly resources of other types.

OtherMenu and AppleScript

OtherMenu can be used to run compiled AppleScript documents, assuming that you have AppleScript installed.  If you hold down the shift key while selecting such a file, then it will be opened in the Script Editor instead.

Conversely, one can use AppleScript to invoke OtherMenu:

tell application "OtherMenu"
  Open "Memory Map"
end tell

Submenu-generating externals can be scripted with a slightly different syntax:

tell application "OtherMenu"
  Open "Paste Clips" menu item 2
end tell

For this syntax to work, the external must be in the hierarchy of the OtherMenu Folder.  That is, in can be in the OtherMenu Folder, or a subfolder thereof, or a subfolder of a subfolder, etc.  An alias to an external will work, but folder aliases will not be resolved.

It is also possible to tell OtherMenu to open an item that is not an external, or an item that is not in the OtherMenu Folder, though I can think of few reasons to do so.  In any case, here is an example, which opens the OtherMenu extension in the front application.

tell application "Finder"
  copy (file "OtherMenu" of extensions folder) to x
end tell

tell application "OtherMenu"
  Open x with modifiers option
end tell

KeyQuencer, OneClick, and QuicKeys

OtherMenu can also run a KeyQuencer macro file, assuming you have KeyQuencer installed.  (When I say KeyQuencer macro file, I mean a text file created by the Macro Editor, not a macro file created by exporting macros from the KeyQuencer control panel.)  If you hold the shift key down while selecting such a file, it will be just as if you had double-clicked the file in the Finder: The macro Editor will open and run the macro.  Finally, if you hold the shift and command keys, the Macro Editor will open the file but not run it.

It is also possible to use KeyQuencer to run OtherMenu externals, using the OMOpen extension that comes with KeyQuencer (versions 1.2 and later.)

I have supplied a library of OneClick buttons, which use AppleEvents to run OtherMenu externals.

I have also supplied a QuicKeys extension called OtherMenu runner, which can be used to run OtherMenu externals. 

The Background-only Application

In the Memory Map external, you might have noticed that there is a line listing OtherMenu as if it were an application.  In fact OtherMenu does have an application part as well as an extension part.  The application is a background-only application, also known as a faceless background application, so it does not appear in the application menu or in the “About this Computer” window.  In versions of OtherMenu before 2.0, this background-only application was in a separate file called “OtherMenu AE Helper”.

The background-only application serves several purposes:  It helps OtherMenu record double-clicked files as recent documents, it signals OtherMenu periodically when you turn on the option to update menus in the background, it talks to the Finder on behalf of the Finder Folders external, and it makes it possible to control OtherMenu with AppleScript.  It doesn’t use much RAM or processor time, but if you ever wish to turn it off, you can do so using the Memory Usage dialog.  You can turn it back on the same way.

Tips For Running OtherMenu

In some cases, there may not be enough room on the menu bar for all of an application’s menus plus the system menus.  If you have selected the “menu at left” setting, OtherMenu will be the first to disappear.  You may want to use a utility such as MICN (freeware) or Menuette (shareware) to lessen menu-bar crowding.

OtherMenu launches most documents (i.e., items other than applications, desk accessories, FKEYs, and OtherMenu externals) by telling Finder to open the file.  When this happens, Finder will momentarily come to the foreground.  If there is not enough memory to open the file, Finder will display an alert box telling you about the problem.

Many of the functions of OtherMenu and its externals require that Finder be running.   OtherMenu can launch applications (including Finder itself), but not documents, when Finder is not running.

If you reorder a menu with the prefix techniques described above, then you will not be able to drag into that menu with versions of Glidel earlier than 3.5.2.

DiskDoubler (version 4.0.1 and probably other versions) causes a crash if you try to open a directory dialog on top of another directory dialog.  There is a similar conflict with the General Controls control panel from System 7.5 and later, but I have included a patch to fix that.  See the chapter about that patch for more information.

QuikFloppy 1.0 conflicts with the “Maintain volume items” feature.  Version 1.0.1 fixes the bug.

The startup animation in Turner Interactive’s Iggy Cuckoo Clock conflicts with OtherMenu’s recent files feature.  I have reported this to the authors of the Cuckoo Clock.

Compatibility problems have been reported with CP TrashBack, Menu Enabler 1.0, and Escapade.