MFC: How to select MENUITEM Separator?

Question

Hi all. I have a question related to MFC application: is it possible for an MFC application to receive "select" or "WM_COMMAND" event for MENUITEM separator?

MY OBJECTIVE: when a user performs right-click in the program, a pop-up menu is created with an "auto-hide" functionality. Meaning: the pop-up menu stays when the mouse is inside the menu or submenu or subsubmenu. And it disappears when the mouse is not in one of the menu (outside the popup menu). Current implementation works fine when we create menu and submenu (without MENUITEM SEPARATOR).

PROBLEM: When there are separators inside the pop-up menu, MFC/Windows does not deal with the separator (we can't assign event or ID to it), and hence the pop-up menu will disappear each time the menu navigates on the separator as it was triggered.

Does anyone has a solution to this problem? Maybe there are alternative ways to implement this.

Example of my resource file is summarized below:

IDR_POPUP_MN MENU DISCARDABLE
BEGIN
    POPUP "_POPUP"
    BEGIN
        MENUITEM "Menu A",                      ID_A
        MENUITEM "Menu B",                      ID_B
        MENUITEM SEPARATOR
        POPUP "Menu C"
        BEGIN
            MENUITEM "Menu C-1",                ID_C1
            MENUITEM SEPARATOR

            POPUP "Menu C-2"
            BEGIN
                MENUITEM "Menu C-2-1",          ID_C21
            MENUITEM "Menu C-2-2",          ID_C12
            END
            MENUITEM SEPARATOR

            MENUITEM "Menu C-3",                ID_C3
        END
        MENUITEM "Menu D",                      ID_D
    END
END

Similarly, the same technique should apply also for menubar.

Thanks in advance. Wilson