For hierarchical menus, though, LaunchBar is halfway between textual and graphical. Cmd-Space to access LB, and then type the start of the folder name or a very short abbreviation you've trained LB to recognize. Then, you can navigate that folder's hierarchy using right arrow and up and down arrow keys. You can click on a folder or use paging keys to make larger leaps. For me, that is much easier to control in a deep menu hierarchy than the popup sort of thing you get with the Dock's old hierarchical menus.

That said, the Stacks approach is lacking because, if your stack contains folders, clicking them opens them in the Finder. You can't drill down. So you are forced to manually create a folder of aliases. It needs work, or additional tools, like an AppleScript that will let you select a bunch of files and will automatically create a folder of aliases for those files. That would be easy to do, I think.

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Microsoft MVP for Entourage
AppleScripts for OE and Entourage