Enabling/Disabling menuitems in a JMenu

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Abs - 28 Apr 2004 23:12 GMT

Hi,

The application I'm developing has a JMenu, like any other Swing app
out there. The menuitems in that JMenu are enabled/disabled according
to the state of the app. I'd like to know which is the best way to
enable or disable the individual JMenuItems from any point in the
app, do I have to hold a global pointer to every JMenuItem in the
app and call setEnable() ? Or can I send a change event which
is captured by a hypothetical enablelistener registered in
every menu item ?

thanks in advance

--
abs

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xarax - 28 Apr 2004 23:38 GMT

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> is captured by a hypothetical enablelistener registered in
> every menu item ?

I use Action and ActionListener things. If a menu item [A]
enablement status is dependent only on another menu item [B],
then I also listen for property change events on the
Action item for [B] and set the enablement of [A].

The individual Action items for [A] and [B] have
actionPerformed(ActionEvent) methods that are
called whenever the corresponding menu item [A]
or [B] is selected. You can also have PropertyChangeListener
methods listening for property changes (like enablement)
for the Action items.

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Abs - 29 Apr 2004 20:58 GMT

>>Hi,
>>
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
> methods listening for property changes (like enablement)
> for the Action items.

I'm not sure I've really understood you. I know the basics behind
Actions. What I'm trying to do in my app, a sound file player, is to
enable the "play file" menuitem AFTER the user has successfully opened a
sound file, not when he clicks the "open file" menuitem. The problem I
have is that I don't know how to reach that menuitem without having a
direct or global pointer to it in my app. That's why I thought in firing
some kind of event that this menuitem would be listening to.

Can you help me, please?

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Enabling/Disabling menuitems in a JMenu

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