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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Should <Menu> be a KActionMenu
From:       Benjamin Meyer <icefox () mediaone ! net>
Date:       2002-01-31 15:06:43
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Someone please point the out if any of this is wrong. (see previous post on 
needing more documentation in KAction, etc)

To have a menu that is partially static and partially dynamic ( my example 
being in my im client there is a menu that lists away messages.  Users can 
add and remove away messages from this list as will is that dynamic part and 
the static part is an action to add new messages. ) you can not layout this 
menu using xmlui and KActions.  Currently the only way to do it is to make an 
action (that is a KActionMenu) and fill it in manually within the code of the 
app.

I have been able to come up with 2 ways to get access to a menu and using the 
ui.rc  The first is a call to the guiFactory, which will return a KPopupMenu 
for example: (KPopupMenu *)guiFactory()->container("away_menu", this);  This 
solution allows you to use the ui.rc file to manage the menu, but doesn't 
allow you to add/remove KActions to the menu, only normal KPopupMenu stuff.

The second is to create a KActionMenu in place of the entire submenu in the 
ui.rc file and within the code creat all of the KAction's (for that menu) and 
manually enter them into said KActionMenu.  You have control of where the 
menu goes via the ui.rc file, but not control the placement of the items in 
the menu in the ui.rc file.

From what I can gather when the ui.rc file is parsed it doesn't make 
KActionMenu's, but in fact just makes KPopupMenu's where a <Menu> tag is 
inserted. 

<sidenote>
This is confusing coming from a developer point of view where you would 
expect the opposite of that (i.e. having a KActionMenu generated that you can 
access).  Personally it took me forever to figure out how to set an icon for 
a menu because I thought I was suppost to do it in the ActionProperties and 
not in the Menu tag itself (<Menu name="foo" icon="bar">).  It then took me 
most of today to figure out that KActionMenu's weren't even being used.
</sidenote>

Am I wrong to think that we should have createGUI() use KActionMenu's and not 
KPopupMenu's?

If this change was made either the createGUI() would dynamicly add 
KActionMenu's to the actionCollection() or the developer would have to add 
any KActionMenu's to the actionCollection() before calling createGUI() just 
as they now add KAction's.

If everyone thinks that this is a bad idea we should at least put a note in 
the KActionMenu stating that it is not what is used by the xmlui for <Menu>.

-Benjamin Meyer

P.S. Another thing that I thought of is that unless you have <Menu> be a 
KActionMenu there is no way to disable the popupmenu.
 
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