Umenu and Emdl

[Grahame Blackwood]

Hi Steve and all

I've installed both programs and minimally adapted a menu following your
examples. The menu I adapted happens to be the Outlining menu and I've
added three items to it. They work nicely, thank you. The only problem I
had was with the first one when I specified a directory as /Documents
instead of ~/Documents (Doh!).

Having got over that glitch, I look forward to building up a repertoire
of menu choices for my frequently used command line operations. I often
use ctrl-R to repeat commands and I can see Umenu will give me a
structure for commands that I currently use ad-hoc.

And I'm not just thinking of myself. For some of the work I do, your
programs with their structured menus could help me to make obvious to
colleagues what needs to be done and help me to pass on responsibilities
to them (ah, yes, I suppose I am thinking of myself to some extent).
Talking colleagues through a menu structure would certainly make it
easier to pass on responsibility by taking out two layers of complexity
ie directory structure and the choice of functions/programs to use.

I'll continue adapting Umenu to my needs and I'll report from time to
time how it's going on.

Cheers

G
 




_______________________________________________
VimOutliner mailing list
VimOutliner@...
http://www.lists.vimoutliner.org/mailman/listinfo

[Steve Litt]

On Saturday 10 October 2009 15:25:25 Grahame Blackwood wrote:

> Hi Steve and all
>
> I've installed both programs and minimally adapted a menu following your
> examples. The menu I adapted happens to be the Outlining menu and I've
> added three items to it. They work nicely, thank you. The only problem I
> had was with the first one when I specified a directory as /Documents
> instead of ~/Documents (Doh!).
>
> Having got over that glitch, I look forward to building up a repertoire
> of menu choices for my frequently used command line operations. I often
> use ctrl-R to repeat commands and I can see Umenu will give me a
> structure for commands that I currently use ad-hoc.
>
> And I'm not just thinking of myself. For some of the work I do, your
> programs with their structured menus could help me to make obvious to
> colleagues what needs to be done and help me to pass on responsibilities
> to them (ah, yes, I suppose I am thinking of myself to some extent).
> Talking colleagues through a menu structure would certainly make it
> easier to pass on responsibility by taking out two layers of complexity
> ie directory structure and the choice of functions/programs to use.
>
> I'll continue adapting Umenu to my needs and I'll report from time to
> time how it's going on.
>
> Cheers
>
> G

Hey Grahame,

Thanks to some pretty kewl ideas from David Patrick, I put together a single
UMENU/EMDL package that installs with a tarball extraction, and offers a menu
interface to compiling EMDL files into menus. It's really foolproof and an
order of magnitude simpler than the two separate distributions.

Here's how you install:

cd
tar xzvf umenu-0.7.0-easyinstall.tgz
cd .umenu/program
./umenu.pl firstmenu

Then use the Edit, Compile, Transfer and Run submenu to do those activities on
new EMDL files. The default location of emdl files is .umenu/emdlfiles, and
putting them there makes it much easier, although I suggest backing them up
somewhere else.

The first line of the EMDL file should be the letter or string that defines the
particular menu system -- typically a single letter but can be more if you
expect to have more than 26 menus. The rest of EMDL is defined here:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/projects/emdl/index.htm

EMDL doesn't require VimOutliner, but it was very much made with VO in mind
and is fast as lightning when using VO as your EMDL editor. I have to go now,
but in another message I'll explain how to make VO recognize EMDL files the
same as .otl files.

HTH

SteveT


Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt




_______________________________________________
VimOutliner mailing list
VimOutliner@...
http://www.lists.vimoutliner.org/mailman/listinfo

[David J Patrick-2]

Steve Litt wrote:
> Thanks to some pretty kewl ideas from David Patrick, I put together a single
> UMENU/EMDL package that installs with a tarball extraction, and offers a menu
> interface to compiling EMDL files into menus. It's really foolproof and an
> order of magnitude simpler than the two separate distributions.

as different as night and day! right on !
It mean I might actually use it ;-)

I'm certainly going to play with it now.
After perusing the contents, I'm quite taken by how straightforward the
source files are.

>
> EMDL doesn't require VimOutliner, but it was very much made with VO in mind
> and is fast as lightning when using VO as your EMDL editor. I have to go now,
> but in another message I'll explain how to make VO recognize EMDL files the
> same as .otl files.

is there yet an edml_syntax.vim ?

idea 1) if the two share such an affinity, how hard would it be to
establish a natural way to evoke a umenu from within vim ?

idea 2) one of the most neato ways to show off the power and versatility
of edml/umenu, might be to put together a menu of vimoutliner
configuration options ? for example;

vimoutliner config
        display
                colors light
                colors dark
                colors light256
                colors dark256
        folding
                classic
                fastfold
                set always folded
        metadata
                cost summary
                list
                summary
        plugins
                checkboxes
                otl2aft
                otl2html
                otl2impress
        other
                setup Apache::otl

etc.

just a thought, not really necessary, but maybe handy.
It could / should be the default fancy option menu thingy
djp

>
> HTH
>
> SteveT
>
>
> Steve Litt
> Recession Relief Package
> http://www.recession-relief.US
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> VimOutliner mailing list
> VimOutliner@...
> http://www.lists.vimoutliner.org/mailman/listinfo

_______________________________________________
VimOutliner mailing list
VimOutliner@...
http://www.lists.vimoutliner.org/mailman/listinfo

[Steve Litt]

On Saturday 10 October 2009 22:36:36 David J Patrick wrote:
> Steve Litt wrote:

> > EMDL doesn't require VimOutliner, but it was very much made with VO in
> > mind and is fast as lightning when using VO as your EMDL editor. I have
> > to go now, but in another message I'll explain how to make VO recognize
> > EMDL files the same as .otl files.
>
> is there yet an edml_syntax.vim ?

I'm not a good enough Vim programmer, but standard VO has great coloring on
EMDL files.

>
> idea 1) if the two share such an affinity, how hard would it be to
> establish a natural way to evoke a umenu from within vim ?

_exe_invoke_umenu_e.sh

Then ,,e

>
> idea 2) one of the most neato ways to show off the power and versatility
> of edml/umenu, might be to put together a menu of vimoutliner
> configuration options ? for example;
>
> vimoutliner config
> display
> colors light
> colors dark
> colors light256
> colors dark256
> folding
> classic
> fastfold
> set always folded
> metadata
> cost summary
> list
> summary
> plugins
> checkboxes
> otl2aft
> otl2html
> otl2impress
> other
> setup Apache::otl
>
> etc.

Holy freakin cow -- you're right!

The classic way to accomplish this is to have Programmer A write a small
number of no-gui executables whose only user interface is getopt-long
arguments, and have Programmer B front end those executables with UMENU. The
beauty is, Programmer A never has to worry about user interface, and
Programmer B never has to worry about anything more complex than a Unix
command, and all the executables can be written in different languages and
UMENU can still tie them together to look like a single, uniform application.

I've done a lot tougher stuff than this with UMENU -- my song player and midi
player are examples.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt


_______________________________________________
VimOutliner mailing list
VimOutliner@...
http://www.lists.vimoutliner.org/mailman/listinfo

[David J Patrick-2]

Steve Litt wrote:
> Holy freakin cow -- you're right!
It was bound to happen eventually :-D
>
> The classic way to accomplish this is to have Programmer A write a small
> number of no-gui executables whose only user interface is getopt-long
> arguments, and have Programmer B front end those executables with UMENU. The
> beauty is, Programmer A never has to worry about user interface, and
> Programmer B never has to worry about anything more complex than a Unix
> command, and all the executables can be written in different languages and
> UMENU can still tie them together to look like a single, uniform application.
Hello Programmer B! Are you also Programmer A ?
>
> I've done a lot tougher stuff than this with UMENU -- my song player and midi
> player are examples.
WHat's that now ? you're adding a media player to VO ? neat !
;-)
djp
_______________________________________________
VimOutliner mailing list
VimOutliner@...
http://www.lists.vimoutliner.org/mailman/listinfo