Best way to populate a recent files popup menu button

[Mag]

Hi all,

I have a Mac application that can open files. I would like to add a "recents" popup menu that list the name of the files user opened. When user choose a menu item the file is opened. Some suggestion in how is the best way to accomplish this with LC?

PS
Would be great to be able to add a Clear Recents menu item and a menuitem grey that appairs when there are not recents (No Recents).

[Simon]

Hi mag,
This sounds like a "Preferences" or "Data" file, lots of posts in the forums on that.
Pretty much just write the files names (url's) to an external file and save. Clearing the names I think you'll see is easy.
Write them to another stack seems popular, I like using a text file because they are easy to read.

Simon

[Mag]

Hi Simon, thank you so much for the message. Before to store data on disk, I would like to understand what is best to do when I have a file path, how to process it and local store name and path, what kind of container is better to use and hw to populate the menu. Any experience or suggestion on this will be welcome!

[Simon]

Hi Mag,
here:
http://forums.runrev.com/phpBB2/viewtop ... ile#p81542
I think the last posting gives you the right info. The only thing I'd change is the open/read/close thing. It's easier just to say "put url("file:"specialFolderPath("Documents") & "/prefs.txt"" into myVar" and read from that. Writing is the same.

Simon

[Mag]

Thank you Simon, and how do you usually handle the populating of menu items?

[Simon]

For a Open Recent File you'd have to either set a max number of items or build on the fly.
The items are just buttons all grouped together.

Code: Select all

set itemDel to "/"
set the label of button "3rdchoice" to the last item of line 3 of myVar --line 3 contains the url to file

and for the button

Code: Select all

put line 3 of myVar into tDoc
launch document tDoc

I guess you'd have to make myVar a global.

Simon
EDIT: I suppose it could just be a list and not actual buttons.

[Mag]

Thank you for the post. Actually I don't need to store the info between sessions. Anyway thank you for the info.

I noticed that if I want to set a menuitems like these:
http://www.apple.com
http://www.apple.com/iphone

I get these:
http:/www.apple.com
http:/www.apple.comiphone

[Klaus]

HI Mag,

since the SLASH is used as a delimiter for menu shortcuts, you have to ESCAPE (= replace ) the SLASHES like this:
...
http:\/\/www.apple.com
http:\/\/www.apple.com\/iphone
...

Best

Klaus

[Mag]

Thank you.

And how I populate the menu via code? Via inspector is easy, I just enter the text, but via code, I don't find the right way in docs.

[Klaus]

...
set the text of btn "your menu here" to tVar
...

[Mag]

...
set the text of btn "your menu here" to tVar
...

YEAH!

PS
No clickable emoticons yet

[Mag]

Thank you so much Simon and Klaus, with your help I done a great implementation of my recents button!