Icon based Menu Systems for Graphical Displays

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johngb
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Icon based Menu Systems for Graphical Displays

Post by johngb » Wed Dec 26, 2007 5:05 pm

Has anyone managed to design a generalised menu system which could be used for creating icon based menus. I have been trying to find a way where I could have a set tables stored in Code memory which could be used to configure a generalised menu routine. The tables would comprise sets of bit maps for the icons and strings for text. Additional tables would reference specific icons and text which would form a specific menu.

I have implemented a system like this with the Proton PDS Basic using a series of linked tables held in code. This is possible because using a label in a list of CData data will in-fact place a pointer to that label in that code location. The great benefit of such an arrangement is that you only have to change a set of tables to completely change the layout of a menu.

The problem with Swordfish is that it is not possible to place pointers to labels in code space. I.e. you cannot generate a constant table which contains items which reference another constant table. It seems that the AddressOf or @ prefix can only be used at run time. :o

Dave's explanation is that the Compiler is not aware of address code layout at compile time. I can't say I really understand the issue as I thought you should be able to do this using labels and let the assembler/linker do the absolute addressing.:?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
JohnB

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