Menu maker

From Color 64 BBS Wiki

Tools - Automated Menu Maker Tool

The included program "menu maker" is a self-contained menu-making program that will create a menu for each access level. To use menu maker, first boot the "+shell" program to install the ML. Then load and run the menu maker program. Also, if you have just shut your BBS down, you can load and run "menu maker" without loading the "+shell" program, because the ML will still be installed.

When you run the program, it will load your "√bbs.parms" file to get the level for each command. The data statements from line 40000-40043 contain the description for each command number. Those descriptions that say "**UNUSED**" are not used in creating the menus, because they are associated with parameters that aren't commands.

Change the descriptions to whatever you wish, but only the first 15 characters of each description will be used (for formatting purposes).

Lines 20035-20050 contain the header of the menus. Currently it has some generic text in it but change it to whatever you wish. The menus are created so that they work in both 40 and 80 columns because each command character and description totals out to 20 characters each. Here is a demonstration of what the descriptions will look like in 40 columns (an F5 character precedes each description, so it cycles through your system colors):

[R] Read Msgs       [@] Post Office  
[L] Caller Log      [M] Membership List 

The menu maker uses a Variable MCI for each command character inside the brackets. This means that if you change a command character (but not a level for one) in SETUP, the menus will automatically change to reflect the new command character (and thus you won't have to re-run the menu maker).

MCIs to print the time and date are also included in the files, to save program space.


Tools