Globalmenu analysis tool / logger?

likytau · 2013-12-21 01:41:19

You know the 'global menus' that can be seen in Unity and Gnome, which are exported from the applications and then appear as a part of the desktop environment's interface?

I'm looking for a globalmenu 'provider' that actually does not display the menus, but rather, logs the info about menus that the app provides. It seems to me this application must exist, since it would be necessary for debugging Unity and Gnome global menus during their initial development. Searches (here, AUR, Google) have turned up nothing related.

(I had hoped to install Unity and see exactly how it worked, but the 'unity' package seems to be broken.)

Some context: Accessing less common actions in most applications is a pain, involving repeatedly lugging the pointer around and examining the screen, or remembering sequences of mnemonics (like 'Alt-I t h' -> Image->Transform->Flip horizontally). Global menu search ala Unity is not good enough by itself (non-menu actions, and composite actions, should also be accessible).
I'm developing a system to make this easy (dmenu style menu entry/macro searching, and hierarchical pie-menus via Gnome-Pie) for a restricted set of applications (in my case, graphics apps like MyPaint, GIMP, Krita, GrafX2, Inkscape)

Being able to introspect the menu data rather than having to enter it manually would be a HUGE timesaver for this.

Last edited by likytau (2013-12-21 02:03:51)

Thaodan · 2013-12-21 02:19:32

As the globalmenu is dbus based you could write a scrit that parses the dbus connection of the apps and the globalmenu display provider (eg. Unity or KDE Menubar).

likytau · 2013-12-21 02:25:15

Thanks Thaodan, that sounds like a workable idea. Once I get a working globalmenu, I'll try it out. It seems all the obvious options are broken (unity, unity-2d, gnome2-globalmenu..). Currently trying to get mate-globalmenu built.

Thaodan · 2013-12-21 02:44:20

there a dbus connection viewer in qt, that displays all dbus connections and such. Its called 'qdbusviewer-qt4' or for qt5 'qdbusviewer-qt5'
its inclued in qt4 or qt5-tools
but I don't know the dbus path and don't found any spec (like with mpris).

Last edited by Thaodan (2013-12-21 02:45:58)

likytau · 2013-12-21 05:44:04

Yes, I have tried it and looked around, only found some AT-SPI exports, for a very few apps. It is the tool I will use once I have something to inspect

EDIT:
building mate-globalmenus is a serious trial, but I'm still going. In the meantime I found that you can find a lot of useful information about what UI elements are where, with what mnemonics, by grepping through the application's .po files, using a command like this:

grep -B1 -Ee '^msgid.+_[a-zA-Z]' en_GB.po

Last edited by likytau (2013-12-21 08:31:14)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-12-21 01:41:19

Globalmenu analysis tool / logger?

#2 2013-12-21 02:19:32

Re: Globalmenu analysis tool / logger?

#3 2013-12-21 02:25:15

Re: Globalmenu analysis tool / logger?

#4 2013-12-21 02:44:20

Re: Globalmenu analysis tool / logger?

#5 2013-12-21 05:44:04

Re: Globalmenu analysis tool / logger?

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