Item Element

Group membership: Menu & items

Adds a new item to the enclosing menu.

Items are of three types: normal, check or radio.

normal menu items are the regular items that launch an action.

check menu items are items that have two states: on or off. They can be used for such actions as showing or hiding one item in the window.

radio menu items are items that group multiple choices together. They allow the user to select one item of a list of choices. Not unlike radio elements, radio menu items have a group attribute which names the group in which this particular item belongs to.

Attributes

Name

Type

Required

Description

accelerator

CDATA

Identifies the key combination that executes this menu item when pressed on the keyboard.

The format of this attribute's value is such:

Ctrl, Alt and Shift are modifier keys. Then, a single plus character (+) is specified, and finally, the character is added.

The modifier keys (Ctrl, Shift and Alt) may be combined together to allow key combinations like Ctrl + Alt + X.

It is also possible to use Java's KeyStroke class format to specify which accelerator key to use.

group

CDATA

Declare the group in which this item will be a participant.

Nothing prevents the use of the same group as one defined in a radio element.

Identifies the name by which this control will be referenced by other parts of the JGB XML file or Java code.

mnemonic

CDATA

Identifies the character that will be used as this control's mnemonic.

refaction

IDREF

More information forthcoming

selected

CDATA

Determines if this item should be selected when the window opens. This attribute will be used only if the menu item's type is check or radio.

Literal values

Value

Description

false

Leave the item to it's default value when the window opens.

true

Select this item when the window opens.

Select means different things depending on the type of item.

text

CDATA

Specifies the text that will appear on the control.

Do not add an underline (_) or ampersand (&) to the text attribute to identify the mnemonic. Use this element's mnemonic attribute for that purpose.

type

CDATA

Define the type of item that is being added to the menu.

Literal values

Value	Description
check	Declare a check box menu item.
normal	Declare a regular menu item.
radio	Declare a radio menu item.

Example usage

…
<menu id="fileMenu" text="File">
    <item text="New" mnemonic="n" accelerator="Ctrl+N"/>
    <item text="Open..." mnemonic="o" accelerator="control o"/>
    …
</menu>
<menu id="viewMenu" text="View">
    <!-- Add a checkable item to the view menu, and check it by default -->
    <item text="Status Bar" type="check" selected="true"/>
    <separator/>
    <!-- Add a nested menu item to the menu, allowing selection of the sort order -->
    <item text="Sort By" mnemonic="s">
        <item text="Name" mnemonic="n" group="sortBy" type="radio" accelerator="Ctrl+Shift+F5" selected="true"/>
        <item text="Size" mnemonic="s" group="sortBy" type="radio" accelerator="Ctrl+Shift+F6"/>
        <item text="Date" mnemonic="d" group="sortBy" type="radio" accelerator="Ctrl+Shift+F7"/>
        <item text="Author" mnemonic="a" group="sortBy" type="radio" accelerator="Ctrl+Shift+F8"/>
    </item>
</menu>
…

Parent element(s)

menu, popupmenu.

Child element(s)

methodCall, property, register.