User-modifiable popup menus for object oriented behavior

摘要

A graphical user interface for a data processing system includes a method of generating a popup menu of actions allowed on an object represented in the graphical user interface. The method includes the steps of interrogating extended attributes for an object and each elder object to the object. Interrogation is for default actions and suppression markers. With each interrogation step the method adds actions linked to the object or to an elder object by another application and removes actions identified by suppression markers by another application from an interim list. After interrogation of the layers for modifications from other applications, the method provides for determining if any user defined actions and suppression markers are present for the object. If yes, the user defined actions are added to the interim list and actions matched by the suppression markers are removed from the interim list. A popup menu is then generated from the interim list.