is there a limitation on the context menu? XMeatL 7

[achu]

Hi,
  I implemented a dynamic right-click menu based on the database query so that the submenu options varies on the user.
  The code is part of XMetal.mcr so that it applies to all the document types. I do see the menu item shows up correctly for all the document types except for the ones with a long right-click menu, which contains 16 menu items. all the others show up correctly have less than 10 menu items on the context menu.
  according to this observation, it makes me wonder if there is a limited number of right-click menu items we can add to it?
  Thanks in advance

Windows 7
XMetal author essential 7.0

Allen

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[Derek Read]

There may be some ultimate limit, but I think it would be way beyond anything usable in a good UI.

I have tested context menus that list hundreds of items. See this demo (the total number of items displayed in this case depends on the current DTD and limitations in how the macro is written, not the context menu, limit it to 100 items): http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php/topic,738.0.html

Large lists of options can be difficult to use, so in general I would try to keep them to a “reasonable” number that would fit your “standard” user's screen dimensions to avoid displaying a scroll arrow (an up or down arrow at the top or bottom of the current section of the context menu when it contains too many items to fit the screen dimensions).

I'm also attaching a screen capture showing the context menus that are created through script for the DITA authoring solution included with XMetaL Author Enterprise. The largest section exceeds what you are describing (which leads me to believe there is some kind of scripting error going on in your case). It shows the context menu expanded to three levels with the last level containing 25 items.

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