An item in the menu is represented by the item text. It appears flush-left in the menu and can be selected by the user with the mouse or the keyboard (cursor keys, underlined significant character). The row position in the menu depends on the entry in the Sequence field and can be menu-specifically set if the item is used in several menus.
When a menu is created DataView automatically underlines the first significant character in all item texts. The user can then select the item by using the corresponding key. If you want to deviate from this default procedure and underline a different character in the item text, you have to enter a & in front of the desired character. With && the &-character can be unmasked and displayed as single character in the item text.
Icons can be positioned in front of selection texts. They are installed with the entry #Filename:Text in the Text field of the selection master (Attention. Specify filenames with .bmp). Only the .bmp graphics format and the default format of x pixels are supported. The icons are to be stored in a directory specified by the environment variable DATAVIEW_CBMP.
Selections with icons cannot only be used in menus but also as buttons in button areas.
In order to structure especially long menus you can use separators to create visible groups of selections. A separator is nothing but an item object creating a line in the menu. You create an item, enter a separator character in the Text field (e.g. hyphen, one is sufficient) and the macro @LINE in the Userexit field. If the item is used in a menu, the macro will automatically create a separating line. If a separator item is the last item in a menu, it will not be displayed.
Separators cannot only be used in menus but also i toolbars (top button areas).
Item texts for menus can be directly read from the columns of a database. However, this procedure is only useful for field selection menus. Detailed information can be found in the section
-> Item Texts in Field Selection Menus.