Menu Modification and Building Broken

yes, looks like only the category_menu_items thing works, but the standard menu_settings has no effect.

Yes, maybe this is well known and not critical, but if it could work, it would take half of the time to create menus.

Yeah..time... ;)

You are correct: when you have category_menu enabled, changing the values in the 'menu settings' area of the category / container editing form has no effect. Category_menu has been designed specifically to override these settings, because if it didn't then the problem would be reversed: the 'menu settings' form elements would work, but the 'category menu settings' ones would not.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that I currently have no solution for. Because the menu items that category_menu creates are treated a 'custom menu items' by Drupal, they appear to the menu module to be user-defined. This means that as far as the menu module is concerned, the menu item specified by category_menu, and the menu item that you can specify in the 'menu settings' part of a node form, are exactly the same. Conflict is therefore inevitable.

I tried very hard to get 2 patches into the core menu module:
- one to create a new menu permission allowing you to restrict the availability of the 'menu settings' box to users;
- and another one to disable the 'menu settings' box for certain specified node types.

Unfortunately, Dries did not think that either of these patches were needed, and despite my best efforts, he refused to commit them. They are now rotting in the patch queue. If the second of these patches (in particular) was committed, you would be able to turn off the 'menu settings' box for category and container nodes. But sadly, you cannot do this, and so the box is there on category and container forms, although it is useless when category_menu is enabled.

Naive idea that pops into my mind while reading your post - maybe you tried that before, maybe a dead-end :

Perhaps you could implement those two features in category module by modifing the node submission form with hook_form_alter ?

I can't seem to get a menu tree out of the main Navigation menu no matter if I make the change through

- admin/menu > edit

or

- node/x/edit > Menu settings

It may appear in my new block for a minute, but the second I visit the node/x/ page it reverts to the Navigation menu block. It's maddening.

Response to Zach's post:

At the moment (drupal 4.7.2, category module versions after 1st June 06), this problem only occurs if you move the links to the Primary links. The moment you *update a container* that is a Primary link, it reverts back to Navigation. Other category_menu links moved into custom blocks don't show this behaviour at least on the few sites I have tested.

Even the primary links-navigation musical chair ceases when you stop meddling around with the containers that are primary links. But, I noticed that even after the container links reverted to the navigation menu, in the 'Menu item settings' area of the node form for the container, the parent is listed as 'Primary Links'. I am not sure if this is a bug for which an issue should be raised.

I am a bit tired of chasing category_menu around, so I decided to stop nagging Jaza(;-)) and take the wonderful features of category module, plus or minus something here and there. I am sure Jaza will get around to solving this when he finds time.

Marked http://drupal.org/node/68228 as duplicate of this one.

(tracking)

It would be great to see these features working - IMO they are excellent design concepts and well worth implementing as fully as possible.

Gold star for Jaza :)

Here's the evil way to turn off menu_otf.
MUAHAHAHAHA!

Anyway, I was thinking that with Drupal 5 and up, as we have hook_enable, we can do our own weight manipulation whenever we get enabled, thereby guaranteeing we run after menu.module.

Changing everything to values and unsetting the delete and advanced links should remove a lot of confusion regarding menu items.

Thoughts?

I had been having difficulty with the synchronization between the menu system and the category module as well.

I find that if I create a hidden container that is a parent of my primary-link containers, then I only ever need to modify its menu manually. When I edit any of my primary-link containers, it then does not change the menu settings for those containers. It appears as though the tutorial on the category module site takes a similar approach of creating hidden containers.

Another alternative is to set the "Default menu" in the "Menu item settings" section of admin/settings/category. If you set this to your primary links menu, then containers will automatically fall under that menu, rather than under the "Navigation" menu.

This becomes complicated when working in multiple languages, however. I have described my solution to that problem (as well as my approach to creating hidden containers) here:

http://openconcept.ca/blog/kevin/i18n/content_structure/hidden_container...

...
Kevin.