Menus traversed from right to left in Task Manager and Display Manager

Apparently, RO3 added "Support for menus that are traversed from right to left". Has this ever been implemented for right-placed icon bar icons, such as the Task Manager and Display Manager? How does it work? Could the OS intercept application menus to use this feature, if the pointer is too close to the right of the display?

Is this any good? SmartMenu is running on my ARMini.

SmartMenu

Cool – I didn’t know about that. Thanks.

I imagine the support was added to RISC OS 3 for internationalisation.

The solution for submenus at the right edge of the screen which I prefer is used by some Linux GUIs, and that is that when the submenu is opened, if there is not enough room for it to fit on screen then the parent menu(s) and the mouse pointer are moved left a certain amount to accommodate the submenu.

This has received a certain amount of discussion on the newsgroups over the years. Some zealots have maintained that this solution is wrong because the mouse pointer belongs to the user and should never be moved by the operating system. However, in use, the process feels entirely natural and is quite intuitive.

It’s certainly more predictable than the horrible Windows solution of having the submenu open on the left hand side even when the submenu markers are on the right!

I think a later version of RISC OS Select may have introduced something along these lines, but I have not seen it in use. I think it was accompanied by some unpleasant animated movement, when really the opening action should be instant.

It’s the equivalent of what we all have to do on occasion at the moment, which is to pick up the parent window by its title bar, move it further left, and then go back to open the submenu. It’s just an automated version of that.