An editor for viewing, hiding, showing, removing, and executing the commands in the fixed menus, editor menus and dynamic menus of the Praat program. To open the button editor, choose Buttons... from the Settings menu in the Praat menu of the Objects window.

What the button editor shows

The button editor gives a list of:

1. The five fixed buttons.

2. The built-in and added fixed menu commands, lexicographically sorted by window and menu name.

3. The added editor menu commands, lexicographically sorted by editor and menu name.

4. The built-in and added action commands, sorted by the names of the selected objects.

Visibility of built-in commands

Most built-in commands are visible by default, but some are hidden by default (see hidden commands). The button editor shows these commands as “shown” or “hidden”, respectively. You can change the visibility of a command by clicking on the blue “shown” or “hidden” text; this text will then be replaced with “HIDDEN” or “SHOWN”, with capitals to signal their non-standard settings. These changes will be remembered in the buttons file across sessions of your program. To return to the standard settings, click the blue “HIDDEN” or “SHOWN” texts again.

Some built-in commands cannot be hidden. They are marked as “unhidable”. The most notable example is the Buttons... button (a failure to make the Commands... command unhidable in Microsoft Word causes some computer viruses to be very hard to remove...).

Added commands

Commands that you have added to the fixed or dynamic menus (probably with Add to fixed menu... or Add to dynamic menu... in the ScriptEditor), are marked as “ADDED”. They are remembered in the buttons file. You can change the availability of these commands by clicking on the blue “ADDED” text, which will then be replaced with “REMOVED”. After this, the added command will no longer be remembered in the buttons file. To make the command available again, click the blue “REMOVED” text again, before leaving the program.

Start-up commands

Commands that were added in an initialization script or plug-in (with Add menu command... or Add action command...) are marked as “START-UP”. They are not remembered in the buttons file. You can change the visibility of these commands by clicking on the blue “START-UP” text, which will then be replaced with “HIDDEN”. This setting will be remembered in the buttons file. To make the command visible again, click the blue “HIDDEN” text again.

Executing commands

The button editor allows you to choose hidden commands without first making them visible in the fixed or dynamic menus.

The editor shows all the executable commands in blue. These include:

1. The fixed Remove button, if one or more objects are selected in the List of Objects.

2. The other fixed buttons, if exactly one object is selected.

3. All of the fixed menu commands, hidden or not, and “removed” or not.

4. Those action commands that match the currently selected objects with respect to class and number.

To execute any of these blue commands, just click on it.

Links to this page

• objects
• Scripting 7.2. Scripting an editor from within