User Access Utilities › Menus › Introduction

Introduction

Dynamic menus system removes the need to have an individual i OS display file (and accompanying HLL program), for each application menu. All menus are instead stored in a special form with the help of a sophisticated interactive utility, the CA 2E Toolkit Work with Menus (YWRKMNU) program. A single menu display utility Go to menu (YGO), is used to present any menu to the user. This dynamic menu approach has many advantages:

• Menus can easily be changed; in fact the process of creating or altering menus becomes so easy, that menus can be used for many other purposes.
• Menu changes are effective immediately; no compilation is involved.
• The menu display program conforms to SAA common user interface standards. Menus created with the System/38 version of Toolkit can automatically be displayed in Toolkit format.
• Changing or adding a menu does not disrupt live systems.
• Different versions of menus can easily be kept.
• The same menus can appear in different environments with different command keys.
• Advanced functions can be provided in all menus, including the ability to jump to any other menu, and to provide help text.
• Toolkit menus allow both a "fast path" and a "slow path", so menus are more efficient to use: your user’s time is saved, especially when response times are slow.
• Less CL programming is required, as the menu display program can provide commonly required functions, such as obtaining confirmation, and job submission.
• Greater standardization is achieved.
• Less storage is required.