The Menu Bar

The Windows GUI version of Epsilon provides a customizable menu bar and tool bar. To modify the menu bar, edit the file gui.mnu. See the next section for details. You can turn it off by adding (set-gui-menu 0) to your einit.ecm file (see Command Files). To modify the tool bar, you can redefine the EEL command standard-toolbar in the file menu.e.

Other versions of Epsilon provide a text-based menu bar, which is hidden by default. Most of the customization variables described below only apply to the text-based menu bar.

You can have Epsilon display a menu bar all the time with the toggle-menu-bar command, or press Alt-F2 (the show-menu command) to display it at any time, and hide it again after you select a command. When you use the menu bar to invoke a command that needs additional input, Epsilon automatically brings up a list of options (as if you typed "?") so that you can select one without using the keyboard.

You can change the contents of the menu bar by editing the appropriate .mnu file. See the next section.

If you hold down the Shift or Ctrl keys while selecting a menu command, Epsilon will run the command with a numeric argument of 1. This is handy for commands that behave differently when given a numeric argument. When you select an item on the text-based menu bar, Epsilon flashes the selected item. The menu-bar-flashes variable holds the number of flashes (default two).

By default, Epsilon displays key bindings for menu items. Set the variable menu-bindings to zero to disable this feature. (Epsilon for Windows ignores this variable and always displays such bindings.) Epsilon computes bindings dynamically the first time it displays a particular menu column. (For several commands with multiple bindings, the menu file selects a particular binding to display.) The rebuild-menu command makes Epsilon reconstruct its menus: use this command after setting menu-bindings or editing and saving a menu file.

By default, when you click on the text-based menu bar but release the mouse without selecting a command, Epsilon leaves the menu displayed until you click again. Set the menu-stays-after-click variable to zero if you want Epsilon to remove the menu when this happens.

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Mouse Support General Concepts Customizing Epsilon's Menu