Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress 4GL Handbook

Creating a dynamic menu

This final section shows you how to create a dynamic menu for a window. Dynamic menus share the same characteristics of static menus. As with other dynamic objects, you use CREATE statements rather than DEFINE statements to create a menu, submenu, or menu item. You parent these objects together in a hierarchy by setting their PARENT attribute. If you need to delete a dynamic menu before its widget pool is deleted, you use the DELETE OBJECT statement to delete the top-level menu object. Progress automatically deletes all its child submenus and menu items.

When you define a static menu, you need to define its elements in reverse order, so that you define the submenus before you reference them in the static DEFINE MENU statement. With dynamic menus you do the opposite. You first define the top-level menu, then its submenus, and then each submenu’s menu items. As you create each one, you parent it to the next level up to establish the menu hierarchy.