Menus and Toolbars

Contents of this chapter:

• 9 Menus and Toolbars
  • 9.1 Pop-up Menus
    • 9.1.1 Creating Pop-up Menus (!)
      • 9.1.1.1 Menu Item Separators
      • 9.1.1.2 Pop-up Menu Callbacks
  • 9.2 Keyboard Accelerators
    • 9.2.1 Accelerator Path
  • 9.3 Status Bar
    • 9.3 1 Status Bar Hints
    • 9.3.2 The Status Bar Widget
      • 9.3.2.1 Status Bar Context and Message Identifiers
    • 9.3.3 Menu Item Information
  • 9.4 Menu Items
    • 9.4.1 Submenus
      • 9.4.1.1 The Mechanics Of Building Submenu Hierachies
        • 9.4.1.1.1 The Tear Off Item (!)
      • 9.4.1.2 Signal Handling Mechanisms And Callbacks With Sub-menus
        • 9.4.1.2.1 Menu Program Design Based On a Hash Of Items and Callbacks
    • 9.4.2 Different Kinds Of Menu Items
      • 9.4.2.1 Image Menu Items
      • 9.4.2.2 Check Menu Items
      • 9.4.2.3 Radio Menu Items
  • 9.5 Menu Bars
    • 9.5.1 Adding Keyboard Accelerators To Menu Items
    • 9.5.2 Keyboard Accelerators And Their Relationships With Menus And Other Widgets
      • 9.5.2.1 Using Accelerator Path In Menus
  • 9.6 Tool Bars
    • 9.6.1 Menus And Sub-menus As Toolbar Items
    • 9.6.2 Some +toolbar-item-menu.rb+ Program Notes
      • 9.6.2.1 Tool Bar Style
      • 9.6.2.2 Icon Size On Your Tool Bars
    • 9.6.3 Dragging And Dropping Tool Bars
      • 9.6.3.1 Detached Toolbar Example
        • 9.6.3.1.1 Orientation Of Detached Toolbar
      • 9.6.3.2 Dragging a Toolbar Within a Window
        • 9.6.3.2.1 Providing extra drag-sensitive spot on the toolbar
  • 9.7 Toolbar Items (!)
  • 9.8 Dynamic Menu Creation
    • 9.8.1 Creating UI Files
    • 9.8.2 Loading UI Files
      • 9.8.2.1 Additional Action Types
      • 9.8.2.2 Placeholders
  • 9.9 Custom Stock Items (!)
  • 9.10 Test Your Understanding

This chapter will teach you how to create pop-up menus, menu bars, and toolbars. You will begin by creating each of them manually, so you learn how the widgets are constructed. This will give you a firm understanding of all of the concepts on which menus and toolbars rely.

After you understand each widget, you will be introduced to Gtk::UIManager, which allows you to dynamically create menus and toolbars through custom XML files. A user interface file is loaded, and each element applied to a corresponding action object, which tells the item how it will be displayed and how it will act.

In this chapter we will learn:

• How to create pop-up menus, menu bars, and toolbars
• How to apply keyboard accelerators to menu items
• What a Gtk::StatusBar? widget is and how you can use it to provide more information to the user about a menu item
• What types of menus and toolbar items are provided by GTK+
• How to dynamically create menus and toolbars with UI files
• How to create custom stock items with Gtk::IconFactory