??????????????????? HELPLESS ???????????????????
Helpless removes the help menu from the menubar.
There shouldn't be any ill side effects of this INIT, the Help menu
still exists, it just doesn't show up on the menubar. Any programs
which use it (including the Finder) don't realize that the user
doesn't have access to the menu, they just go ahead and manipulate the
menu as if it were visible. All programs which follow the rules should
be OK.
However, this is a hack and as such, there is sure to be
incompatibilities. Please let me know if you find any.
I'd also like any comments at all about it, even just to say you
picked it up.
I can be reached at:
Carl W. Haynes III
Haynes Consulting
PO Box 2715
W. Lafayette, IN 47906
Internet: [
[email protected]][1]
AOL: CWH3
\-----------------
This program and its source are FREE and in the public domain.
You may use as you please.
Released: December 1991
\-----------------
Technical stuff:
Helpless works through a head patch to InsertMenu. When InsertMenu is
called, Helpless checks if the string in the Resource 'STR ' -4048 is
contained within the first menu item. On US systems the resource
string is "About Balloon Help" since the 1st menu item of Balloon help
is "About Balloon Help..." this returns true. The menu then is changed
so that it believes that it is a hierarchical menu. Since the menu is
never inserted as a hierarchical menu, it just floats around. The Menu
is still created and the Handle is valid so all calls to the Help
Manager dealing with this menu are still OK.
To make this compatible with foreign systems, just change the string
in 'STR ' -4048 to one which is a substring of your Help Menu's first
item.
(I told you this was a hack!)
\-----------------
Not to be confused with [HelpLess][2], which disables the keyboard's
Help key.
See also: [NoBalloonMenu][3]
Compatibility
Architecture: 68k
[1]: mailto:
[email protected]
[2]:
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/helpless
[3]:
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/noballoonmenu
