Proposal: new menu layout, with examples

[Peter Rice]

James Bonfield wrote:
> 
> Now that several interfaces to EMBOSS are arriving I feel that it is
> important to have a well structured menu system (as indicated in my
> last email).
> 
> I now have a proposed layout, included as an attachment. It may be
> hard to see the problem with the existing setup, so I've produce a
> tcl/tk to display a menu tree and created menu specs for how it is
> now (1.11.0, so nearly now) and my new proposed setup. My new layout
> still has quite a few questionable choices, and perhaps I could
> duplicate more often (although personally I > dislike that) and
> split into more cascading menus. However it's a start[1].

Looks nice - much nicer than the old emboss_menus_orig version!

Should we have 2 classes of groups in ACD files - one for menus with a
short name or hierarchy as in this case, and a longer version (called
'keywords', perhaps, and derived from the current 'groups') for wossname to
search?

> [1] I should also point out that in "Spin" the menu labels are
> actually the program doc lines with the program command name
> in brackets (eg "Finds DNA inverted repeats (einverted)"). However
> I haven't addressed the issue of a common language style for doc
> names yet.

The text is best for many novice users, but I would maybe prefer the name
first (and sorted by name?) for expert users. But of course, it should be
up to the users to say what they want :-)
-- 
------------------------------------------------
Peter Rice, LION Bioscience Ltd, Cambridge, UK
peter.rice at uk.lionbioscience.com +44 1223 224723