Mac Forum / Programming / Mac Programming / November 2005

I'm using Xcode.  I can't use CheckMenuItem in a Carbon app using nib
files.  It doesn't change the checkmark associated with an item.  This is
only true in hierarchical menus.  Checking items works fine in normal
menus.  The menu commands in the hierarchical menu work fine because their
CommandId constants link directly into my code's menu handler callback
without a need to get the MenuHandle of the hierarchical menu.  However,
in order to change the checkmark of an item in a hierarchical menu, I need
the MenuHandle or MenuRef (not clear on the difference) of the menu.  The
only information I have for the menu is the ID I entered for it into
interface builder.

I have tried the following functions:

GetMenu
GetMenuRef
GetMenuHandle
GetMenuID

The first three take numbers, the last takes a MenuRef, so clearly the
last one doesn't work if the others don't work.  I tried all of these with
the ID I entered in interface builder and they all return 0.  Back in
resource based OS 9 world, the number I would enter would be the resource
ID of the menu, and of course that worked, but using the IB menu id in
these functions doesn't work.  I guess it isn't a resource id even though
these IDs are often similar to old resource ids.

So, how do I get the MenuHandle for a hierarchical menu in a nib file?
...or to state the underlying question more directly, how do I alter the
checkmark status of items in a hierarchical menu?

Thanks.

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Keith Wiley         kwiley@cs.unm.edu         http://www.unm.edu/~keithw

"Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn his lesson,
that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to
aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy."
                                           --  Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland
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