Apple II
Technical Notes
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                                                  Developer Technical Support


Apple IIGS
#5:    Window and Menu Titles

Revised by:    Matt Deatherage                                  November 1990
Written by:    Dan Oliver                                        October 1986

This Technical Note discusses spacing for both window and menu titles.
Changes since November 1988:  Revised to include new information on the default
placement of the Apple menu.
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Strings used for window titles should always have a space as the first and last
characters.  This spacing is especially important for windows that use a lined
window title bar since, without the beginning and ending space, theline pattern
in the title bar runs against the title.  Since there will be window editor desk
accessories which allow the user to change the title bar pattern without the
application knowing, you should pad your window titles withspaces even if you
are using black window title bars.

The Window Manager does not force spaces on either side of titles to optimize
the window frame drawing speed; it is much faster to let the text punch ahole in
the title bar pattern than to compute the rectangle, fill it, and draw the text.

To provide the user with a consistent visual interface, you should also pad your
menu titles with spaces.  If you use either one or two spaces (the Apple IIGS
Finder has used two) before and after each menu title, your menu titles will be
consistent and balanced (two spaces work well in 640 mode where one space
usually suffices for 320 mode).  Although it is true that a menu bar will look
about the same if the first menu title has two spaces before it and no space
following it and all the other menu titles have four spaces before them, when
the user pulls down the menu, the Menu Manager's highlighting will clearly (and
embarrassingly) show the spaces in the menu titles.

If you would like to place the Apple menu differently, you must use Menu Manager
calls since you cannot place spaces around the at sign (@) which the Menu
Manager uses to represent the Apple logo in a menu title.  The easiest way to
accomplish this is calling SetMTitleStart to set the starting position for the
leftmost title (usually the Apple menu) within the current menu bar. The Apple
IIGS Finder has used a value of 10 ($0A) pixels.

Beginning with System Software 5.0, the Apple menu is placed at a default of 10
pixels from the left edge of the menu bar in 640 mode or five pixels in 320
mode.  If you use SetMTitleStart to change the default, the value is still
interpreted as an absolute placement from the left edge of the menu bar.  For
example, SetMTitleStart(6) moves the Apple menu one pixel to the right of the
default in 320 mode and four pixels to the left of the default in 640 mode.  Be
sure not to use SetMTitleStart to set the Apple menu starting place to the left
of the default, as doing so interferes with the AppleShare activity arrows.

