Regarding the issue of menu systems I think the suggestion to explore the "Winglue Menuing system" is a good one.

In Epidata Analysis a number of possibilities have been built in. With the next few months I expect to upload a short instruction in using these and will notify the list accordingly.

The remainder of this text is highly technical and users without insight in html language should be warned at this point.

The experienced user can do some experimentation with the following aspects a b c d :

a. Look into the html code of the start.htm, the startfont.htm files found where EpiData Analysis was installed.

Here you will e.g. see the following lines: <li>When you like the size: Click on the number to save your choice <br> <ul> <li> <A HREF='epi:cls;set echo=off;define fn __________________________ global;fn= "@sysdir";cd "@fn";copyfile "epidatastat.ini" "epidatastat.old" /replace;copyfile "epidatastat.10" "epidatastat.ini" /replace;set viewer font size=10;set echo=on;view "Start.htm"'>size=10</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;

The special features which can be used for definition of menu systems are: <A HREF='epi: ........'>size=10</a> meaning a non-standard html tag, with which the analysis system can run commands. And the only thing the user sees is the part "size=10". The remaining parts are standard analysis commands separated by ";".

b. look at the SET commands Issue the command "set" and you will among other things see: . set DISPLAY COMMAND HISTORY OFF DISPLAY COMMAND PROMPT ON etc for COMMANDTREE ,DATABROWSER , MAINMENU, TOOLBAR , variables and woktoolbar.

With a combination of creating your own html code with menu's and using these sets, the whole analysis programme can becomme a menu shell . (e.g. when all the display ...... are set to off).

c. A simple example: c1 create a startfile, e.g. project.htm containing header etc and the two lines: - <a href="epidata.exe myfile.rec">Enter data in myfile</a> - <a href='epi: read myfile /close; cls; boxplot age; type "See my boxplot" /h3; printviewer; type "Menu: F8";'>See a box plot</a> c2 edit the ini file for epidatastat.ini to set all display "sets" to off. c3 add a line: set START PAGE =project.htm

then when you start epidatastat.exe the project.htm file will be the new startfile, just containing the two lines. With knowledge of the html principles you can add tables, background pictures etc.

d. look at the technical documentation available at www.epidata.dk/documentation.php

regards

Jens Lauritsen EpiData Association