Old dog - new tricks

[Howie]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jean-Pierre A. Radley" <appl at jpr.com>
To: "FilePro Mailing List" <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2005 6:00 PM
Subject: Re: Old dog - new tricks


| Howard Wolowitz propounded (on Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 02:22:43PM -0500):
| | FYI:
| |
| | It's not too often that I learn of a feature that I didn't know about in
| | filepro but yesterday I did.
| |
| | I think Joe Hirschman at Aljex discovered this one, I have no idea if it
is
| | documented.
| |
| | We needed to test some new code, running as a user, but when the user
logs
| | in he is taken to a standard menu and cannot escape to the shell.
| |
| | We didn't want to change the menu without testing the new code.
| |
| | It seems that if you create or modify a filepro menu (DOS or UNIX) and
add
| | an entry that has  a  choice, but leave the description blank and have
an
| | action - the resulting menu does not show the choice but does allow you
to
| | stop on what appears to be a blank entry and press enter to take the
hidden
| | choice. You can also type in the choice to get to that menu entry
| |
| | I wouldn't leave it that way for long but it was enough for us to test
the
| | new code before making it available to the user.
| |
| | Bug or feature?  I don't know but it is cute
|
| It doesn't work unless this "hidden" item is between some others, and not
| tacked on as the last item.
|
| But I don't understand how making it hidden or not helps you test a new
| entry.
|
| -- 
| JP

We were worried if we changed the user's menu they would see something new
and experiment with the new routine, which we weren't ready for.

By making it hidden the user got to see their normal menu and took there
normal choices.

Since we knew about the hidden entry we could position to it (or press the
hidden key) and test the new code.

Howie