MENU-ER

[actually Menu Maker]

by Zafar Ahmad Khan



It always amazes me when a program travels for thousands of miles

from, say, Islamabad (in Pakistan), across deserts and oceans, through

storms and perhaps even battlefields, and loads first time. And yet

other programs arrive from just a stone's throw away and sound as if

they've fallen victim to the tracks of a Challenger tank.



Zafar Ahmad Khan's tape did indeed load first time, having survived

the journey from Islamabad (in Pakistan) intact. Among the top-notch

stuff therein, I've picked Menu-er (Argh. Ed) as the most useful. What

it does it to let you create pop-up menus a bit like the ones on 128K

Spectrums with a group of options to choose between and a little bar

that moves up and down to pick them with. The possibilities for using

them in your own programs are, of course, endless.



It's all written in Basic, so all you've got to do is type it in and

try it out. Zafar's given us a demonstration menu which doesn't really

do much so you'll probably want to embark on a few of your own. This

is simplicity itself..



For each menu you'll need to write two DATA statements. The first

should contain seven numbers (line, column, paper, ink, number of

selections, length of longest selection and shadow colour) followed by

the title of the menu, and the second should be a list of the

selections that make up the menu. Take a gander at the demo's data

lines if you're not too sure about any of this. The bulk of your

program goes in the space before line 9000. Every time you want to

print a menu do RESTORE [line number of first relevant DATA statement]

and then GO SUB 9000. The number of the selection picked will be

returned as 'sel'. At the moment the program simply prints up this

number for demo purposes - yours will obviously do something a bit

more sensible.