Questions and Answers
Adding to Paste Clips

Q.  How do I add my own clippings to the Paste Clips submenu?

A.  For any OtherMenu external, you open the about box or configuration dialog by selecting the external with the shift key held down.

Renamed item doesn’t appear in menu
 Q.  Sometimes when I rename a file or folder in the Finder, the name does not update in OtherMenu.  Why?

A.  When you rename something in the Finder, it does not change the modification date of the enclosing folder.  Therefore, OtherMenu has no easy way of noticing that something changed.  If you actually try to select an item that no longer exists under that name, OtherMenu will give you a “file not found” error message, but will then rebuild the menu.

On the other hand, creating or deleting something does change the folder’s modification date.  An easy way to make OtherMenu notice a name change in a folder is to make a new empty folder inside the folder.  You can trash the empty folder immediately.

Settings for Externals
 Q.  Where do external store their settings or preferences?

A.  It depends.  Date/Time, Paste Clips, and Memory Map have separate settings file, stored in a subfolder “OtherMenu External Preferences” of the Preferences folder.  Other externals store settings inside themselves.

No Icons in the Menu
 Q.  Why doesn’t OtherMenu show icons in its menu?

A.  There are two possibilities:  One, you are not running the Appearance Extension.  The Appearance Extension is a standard (and required) part of Mac OS 8, but may be used with earlier systems.  Two, you may have the menu icon feature turned off, in the OtherMenu Preferences dialog.

Command Key Equivalents
 Q.  Why doesn’t OtherMenu allow me to set command key equivalents for its menu items?

A.  Partly it’s a desire to keep it simple.  And partly, I don’t understand the need.  As I see it, if you are the sort of person who likes to do everything with the keyboard, then you should buy a macro program like OneClick, QuicKeys, KeyQuencer, or Tempo.  These programs can create keyboard macros for launching applications and documents, so there would be no need to have keyboard equivalents to normal OtherMenu menu items.  You can also use OneClick, KeyQuencer or QuicKeys to open OtherMenu externals.  See the Main Manual for more information.

Occasional Disk Activity
 Q.  Every few minutes, I hear some disk activity for no apparent reason.  Is that OtherMenu’s doing?

A.  It’s probably the “update cache in background” feature.  If it bothers you, turn it off.

Menu Position
 Q.  Why isn’t there an option to put the menu on the left end of the menu bar, next to the Apple menu, instead of the right end?

A.  OtherMenu uses the system-wide menu mechanism that Apple introduced for the help menu and application menu.  Putting the menu elsewhere would require a completely different technique and would make compatibility problems more likely.

Menu Icon
 Q.  Is there a way to make OtherMenu use a different icon on the menu bar?

A.  Yes.  All you have to do is paste a custom icon onto OtherMenu.  However, this is a little tricky, because the Finder would ordinarily refuse to do that on the grounds that OtherMenu is “in use”.  Here’s what you have to do:  Open OtherMenu’s Memory Usage dialog, and click the “Quit Background App” button.  Now you will be able to assign OtherMenu a custom icon in the usual way.  The new icon will appear on the menu bar after restart.

Make sure you use a custom icon that has a small (16x16) version.

Two Other Menus
 Q.  I love menus.  Can’t get enough of them.  Is there any way to run two copies of OtherMenu, so I can have two extra menus?

A.  Yes.  After making a copy of OtherMenu, you would have to open the copy with a resource editor and change the 'STR ' 128 resource.  Of course this is inefficient, because two copies of OtherMenu’s code will be loaded into the system.  Eventually I might make OtherMenu able to handle more than one OtherMenu Folder and display more than one menu, but I don’t consider it a high priority.

Annoying Shareware Reminders
 Q.   I paid the shareware fee, honest I did, but I still get these occasional shareware reminders.  Why won’t you tell me the secret key or registration code or whatever to turn them off?

A.  OK, here is the secret:  Open the preferences dialog, and check the “I paid” checkbox.

Easter Eggs
 Q.   Are there any “Easter eggs” in the Manual Reader application?

A.  Yes, one.  But don’t get too excited, it’s not a game.