Customizing Epsilon's Menu

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Epsilon User's Manual and Reference

    General Concepts

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       Mouse Support

       The Menu Bar

          Customizing Epsilon's Menu

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Customizing Epsilon's Menu

You can change the contents of Epsilon's menu bar by editing a menu file, which uses an .mnu extension. Epsilon stores the name of its menu file in the variable menu-file, except for Epsilon for Windows which uses the variable gui-menu-file instead. Set the appropriate variable to make Epsilon use a different menu file.

Emulations for Brief and CUA set these variables to make Epsilon use an alternative menu suitable for those emulations, but by default, Epsilon for Windows uses a file named gui.mnu, while all other versions use the file epsilon.mnu. If you put a customized version of an .mnu file in your customization directory (see The Customization Directory), Epsilon will use it instead of the factory version.

The first line of a menu file holds the main menu bar. Each menu entry must have spaces on both sides. Each of the submenus that follow begins with a line that has the submenu title from the main menu (again, with spaces on both sides), then the width in characters of the submenu to create, not including command bindings. A submenu named _popup defines the right-click context menu. The individual menu entries follow, each line containing the menu item name, one or more tab characters, and the definition (normally the name of an Epsilon command to execute). A line starting with a tab puts a blank line in the menu. An actual blank line ends the submenu. A line starting with # is a comment.

If an entry contains a binding (meaning that text before the first tab character extends past the column width indicated for that submenu), Epsilon uses the binding text as-is. Otherwise, Epsilon adds bindings when it first displays the submenu.

Open in Notepad %notepad "%f"
A menu item usually specifies the name of an Epsilon command to run (actually any EEL function that takes no parameters will work), but you can instead put % followed by the command line for an external program Epsilon should run. The command line is interpreted as a file name template, which means you can pass the the name of the current file name, or parts of the name, using % sequences, like %f for the full file name. (See File Name Templates.)

Search the web !"c:\path\to\chrome.exe" https://google.com !"c:\path\to\chrome.exe" https://google.com/search?q=! # Note: Above is actually one long line.
Or instead of the name of an Epsilon command, you can put the full path to an external program to run, surrounded by ! characters. Optionally, following the second ! character, you can put a second command line with a third ! within it. If there's a highlighted region when the menu item is run, Epsilon will use this second command line and substitute the text of the highlighted region for the third ! character.

Or instead of an Epsilon command name, you can put the name of a Windows help file with a $ character before it. Epsilon for Windows will then display that help file.

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