Digital Alchemy is pleased to announce the release of the Mercutio MDEF
version 1.5. The Mercutio MDEF is a Menu DEFinition resource that allow
developers to easily and elegantly extend the power of their application
menus. Mercutio allow menu items to have multiple-modifier key-equivalents
(e.g. shift-command-C), custom icons, item callbacks, and other goodies.
Mercutio menus may also contain "dynamic menu items" that allow a single
menu item to change depending on what modifiers are held down. This keeps
menus shorter while allowing the flexibility of keyboard shortcuts.
Mercutio can be downloaded from the Digital Alchemy web site:

http://www.digitalalchemy.com/mercutio/

Version 1.5 improves compatibility with Mac OS 8, the Apperance Manager 1.0
(including Platinum Theme), and fixes a number of bugs. In particular,
Mercutio 1.5 fixes a bug that would unlock GDevice handles when Mercutio
was used to display popup menus, which could cause a crash later on at
seemingly random times. Because of the serious nature of this bug, ** ALL
MERCUTIO DEVELOPERS SHOULD UPGRADE TO VERSION 1.5 **. For users with
applications that use older versions of Mercutio, several extensions are
available that fix the problem. Details are available at:

http://www.digitalalchemy.com/mercutio/GDeviceProblem.html

Mercutio features include:

- Support for all 4 modifier keys (command, shift, option, control)
- Support for non-printing keys (function keys, page up/down,
arrow keys, etc)
- Graphic icons for non-printing keys: non-printing key equivalents
such as page up/ down, home/help, etc. can be drawn as text OR
as icons that look like the keys on the extended keyboard.
- Dynamic items: items whose contents change depending on what
modifier keys are being held down (e.g. when the option key is
held down, Save becomes Save All).
- Application callback routine to let you decide on the fly what
the item contents should be.
- Support for icon suites, small and large icons, and SICNs in
hierarchical menu items.
- Support for window font/size: Mercutio now correctly draws popup menus
in the current font and size. This means you can use Mercutio for
Geneva 9-pt popup menus and the like.
- Support for WorldScript. Mercutio now supports menus in non-western
scripts (Japanese, Arabian, etc), and correctly draws under
right-to-left system text alignment.
- User-definable style mapping: developer determines which style
bits are used as feature flags
- System 7's Balloon Help, True Gray, color menus, etc.
- Color menus.

The Mercutio MDEF works under System 6.0.4 or later, with or without Color
QuickDraw. Mercutio is fully compatible with System 7, and supports all the
features of the System MDEF. Integrating the MDEF into your program
shouldn't take more than 15 minutes.

The documentation for Mercutio follows the style of Apple's "Inside
Macintosh" manuals, and is in Adobe's Acrobat format.

Developers may license Mercutio for a fee or use Mercutio free of charge as
long as they include certain credits in the About box and documentation,
and send me a copy of the final program (including future upgrades for as
long as they use the MDEF.) See "Mercutio Software License.pdf" for details
on terms of use.

Mercutio is copyright (c) 1992-1997 by Ramon M. Felciano

Ramon Felciano
felciano@digitalalchemy.com
Digital Alchemy