GUI for Dvdauthor - problems with menus

[havingfun]

I am using gfd to author a DVD of a kids dance concert (I was the only parent who didn't run away when they asked for volunteers )

I have a dozen separate m2v and ac3 files from a SONY handicam that records onto mini dvd media

Three questions:

Q1: I'm creating a menu with one dance item per menu page, with a link to the video, a description of the item, a thumbnail image to provide a visual aid and back and next buttons. As I have a dozen pages, I would like the default button on each page to be the Next button - but in gfd I can't find any way of setting the default button on a page.

I can see that it might be possible in the author.xml file by using 'button =' in the <pre> section of the menu, but I do not see how to easily work out which button (by numeric value) to point to

Q2: I was originally going to use switched menus, with 4 items per menu, and the description and thumbnails switching - to decrease the number of menus the user would think exist as they would move through many of them by using up/down remote buttons. However, when I followed the tutorial in the gfd documentation it works (as shown in the tutorial) with up to 3 items in the switched menu.

The moment I added the fourth section to the menu, gfd created different xml in the author.xml file, and the resulting menu system didn't work.

Specifically, when I added the fourth section of the switched menu, instead of something like
<pre> { button=3072; } </pre>
in the xml, there was no <pre> line generated by gfd at all. Of course, if I had to I could add this line in myself, except I do not know which button is which (see Question 1, above)

Consequently, when switching menus, the first three behaved as expected, but when I am in the third menu and use the down arrow (which should select the fourth menu with the appropriate film button highlit, the menu comes up (I know it is the correct one as the thumbnail changes), but the first menu item is highlit, not the fourth and pressing the enter key causes the first (not fourth) film to play

Q3: When I add a new menu item a dialogue comes up asking for
-pre
-post
-pause
-text
-type
parameters
Once the button is added, is there any way to change the pre and post commands, as editing the button later lets you change the text, font, action and gifmask, but NOT the pre and post commands

------------------------

That's a lot of stuff to put in my first post here (I've been reading through the archive for a few days to try to get answers, but no luck)

thanks in advance for any insight

[borax]

Q1: Except for switched menus the first button (1024) is always default. GfD internal it is the first button in the button list of the correpondent menu within the project explorer.
Example:

[-] MainSubMenu1
  [+]   Properties
  [+]   Background
  [+]   HighLight
  [+]   Activated
  [-]   Buttons
    [+]   FreeButton1      <-- 1024
    [+]   FreeButton2      <-- 2048
    [+]   FreeButton3      <-- 3072
    [+]   BackButton       <-- 4096

To have the 'Next' Button as default, you can add a new menu as the first element on any empty menu. This way the 'Next menu' button will always be the default.

Q2: I just tried it with 5 items... no problem. But there may still be an error in my code, as it may depend on the specific type of buttons you are using. There are just to many possibilities to check them all... But in order to help you, I would need your project file (the saved .gfd file). My email can be found in the GUIAuthor.log file.

Q3: The < post > command may be set for any menu within the menu background dialog. For free menus you may also edit the < pre > command, but only in the project explorer:

[-] MainSubMenu1
  [-]   Properties
         Type=SubMenu
         Pause=inf
         PreCommand=g1=1; button=1024;
         PostCommand=

Right click on the line 'PreCommand=...' and you may change the action in a small input box (be careful: If you cancel this input box, the command is deleted; so use 'Ok' in each case!)

[havingfun]

Q1: - the answer is obvious once it has been pointed out

Q2: - the configuration file should be in your inbox by now - let me know if there is anything else you need

Q3: - once again - obvious once you led me to the answer

thanks for the assistance so far - much appreciated