Anguilla Library Computer Club
Resources

Create a Menu

This lesson builds on DOS Lesson 2, where you installed DOS programs from ZIP files. Once you have several programs, it is difficult to remember how to get into them. A menu tool presents a tidy list of program choices. You make your selection with the cursor keys, or by number, then the ENTER key (or the Mouse). The menu finds the program and runs it. When the program finishes, you return to the menu for another selection. The club's menu tool was written by Heidrun and Andreas Spiegl from Munich Germany. It has runs on almost every PC we have and it doesn't consume any of the limited DOS memory.

Activity: Create a Menu and Add a Hangman Choice

Change into \TEMP and into a sub-directory with your name, then Unzip the menu files and type install to install a menu. If this is mysterious, review DOS Lesson 2. What you type is bold, what the computer responds is regular, comments are italics:

     C:\>cd \temp\robert                     Change into TEMP\ROBERT
     C:\TEMP\ROBERT>pkunzip \lcc\menu210.zip Unzip the menu tool
     C:\TEMP\ROBERT>install                  Run the Install program

How to Install Your Menu: Take all the defaults, except:

Select 2 for F1 key help label instead of the ESC exit label on menu.
Select 2 for Clean background instead of Dirty (1).
Press ESC to put the MYMENU.BAT batch file in the current directory (\TEMP\ROBERT) instead of the suggested directory.

To invoke your menu, type mymenu. Try all the menu options. Press ESC to exit back to DOS.

How to Edit Your Menu:

Unzip bagman10.zip so you can put bagman.exe on the menu (this may already exist from DOS Lesson 2).
Use the DOS Edit program to modify the file menu.dat that Install created for you. It defines the menu choices using 4 lines each: a description, a directory, the program or command name, and two stars (**) as a separator.
```
     C:\TEMP\ROBERT>pkunzip \lcc\bagman10.zip   
     C:\TEMP\ROBERTT>edit menu.dat              
```
Save your changes, exit from Edit and test your changes by typing mymenu.

Can you run Hangman? Can you get back to the menu? Can you think of any ways to improve your menu (e.g., change the menu title to Bob's Game Menu, change the Exit message)?