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Date:Mon Dec 8 21:07:46 1996 
Subject:Re: Help Request 
From:Aaron Sloman 
Volume-ID:961208.01 

iainm@cc.strath.ac.uk (Iain McKay) writes:

> I'm trying to update a pop11 procedure and place it into a
> GUI. The basic problem I have is that the procedure uses
> a readitem command to get the value of an attribute. I
> have no idea how to mimic this using propsheets.
> ....

I have not taken in exactly what you are trying to do, nor would
I be able to comment on your solutions.

However, I too have found that for an ordinary pop-11 programmer who
does not want to know anything about X, but just wants to make
simple things happen, propsheet is incredibly difficult to use, so,
with help from various experts (e.g. Adrian Howard, Anthony Worrall)
I put together a package of utilities for using it.

These are available freely from the Birmingham poplog ftp directory
    ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/

The two relevant subdirectories, which include teach and help files
with plenty of examples, are

    pui/
        For popup menus, etc.

    menu/
        For control panels with various sorts of buttons, which
        stay up as long as you need them, providing help, access to
        utilities, etc.

Both directories are available in a compressed tar file
    menutar.gz

The main help files can be browsed via ftp
    ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/pui/help/popuptool
    ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/menu/help/ved_menu

The first one starts:

| HELP POPUPTOOL                                     Aaron Sloman Feb 1995
|
| Several libraries are made available, extending Pop-11's facilities for
| creating menus and X-based interaction panels. This library uses the
| more general facilities in LIB * PROPSHEET, but puts together a
| frequently required subset in a convenient form.

The second one:

| HELP VED_MENU                                       A.Sloman 11 Dec 1993
|                                               Revised A. Sloman Jan 1995
|  ....
| The facilities described here provide mechanism for creating an
| indefinitely large collection of menus that are autoloadable on demand,
| and can be used to drive the editor, VED, or to invoke arbitrary
| commands in one of the Poplog languages, or to invoke Unix or X
| utilities. The menus are recursive in that menus can call other menus
| that call them: i.e. circular calling chains are possible.

We have been using these control panels and menus for beginner
students using either XVed or ordinary VED. Some soon wean
themselves off the menus as they learn to use commands and function
keys. Others continue using the GUI props for three years!

There's a brief demonstration of the some of main facilities in

    ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/menu/teach/menu_demo.p

This shows how to set up two asynchronous control panels that start
stop and change an ongoing graphical display using rc_graphic.

Comments and suggestions for improvement always welcome.

Aaron
===
-- 
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs )
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
EMAIL   A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk
Phone: +44-121-414-4775 (Sec 3711)       Fax:   +44-121-414-4281