The state of global menus

flying sheep · 2013-11-02 15:04:21

Hi, up to now, global menus everywhere worked, but needed tons of packages.

But recently, there have been a flurry of changes in all kinds of projects that confused me.

previously, one had to install

as dependencies:
libdbusmenu-qt
libdbusmenu-gtk{2,3}
gtk{2,3}-ubuntu

as appmenu provider for various toolkits:
appmenu-gtk
appmenu-qt{,5}
firefox-extension-globalmenu (and, if you use KDE libdbusmenu-qt-patched)
java-swing-globalmenu

if you use KDE: optionally plasma-widget-globalmenu
or gnome shell: gnome-globalmenu or indicator-appmenu

but now, libdbusmenu and libdbusmenu-gtk are gone, but there’s libdbusmenu-glib. gtk{2,3}-ubuntu seem to be named gtk{2,3}-appmenu now, and firfox-extension-globalmenu is seemingly deprecated in favor of a firefox patch.

will this patch be integrated into firefox? is it enough to just install gtk{2,3}-appmenu and do the following?

echo "gtk-shell-shows-menubar=1" >> ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

but gtk3-appmenu is deprecated, too…

bottom line: how the hell do i get a globalmenu in firefox, qt-, gtk2- and gtk3-applications? which packages serve what purpose?

Last edited by flying sheep (2013-11-02 15:12:34)

cfr · 2013-11-03 04:12:35

Isn't this now an option within KDE itself? Don't know about other DEs.

donniezazen · 2013-11-03 06:30:10

@cfr It's an option as long as you have dependencies installed. plasma-widget-globalmenu will enable options in KDE settings. I used it a few months ago. All Linux apps are going haywire at the moment with all their great design philosophy (Gnome - split menu, Unity- requiring lots of downstream packages, KDE sticking up for traditional menu, etc.), so, I decided to stick to default.

@flyingsheep You could install packages one by one and report back what works and what doesn't work. QT seems to implement it globally. GTK2 dependencies come from Ubuntu and I don't think GTK3 implementation is complete yet.

cfr · 2013-11-03 16:16:17

I have the option in KDE settings but I don't have plasma-widget-globalmenu installed...

flying sheep · 2013-11-03 18:16:27

donniezazen wrote:

@cfr It's an option as long as you have dependencies installed. plasma-widget-globalmenu will enable options in KDE settings. I used it a few months ago. All Linux apps are going haywire at the moment with all their great design philosophy (Gnome - split menu, Unity- requiring lots of downstream packages, KDE sticking up for traditional menu, etc.), so, I decided to stick to default.

you’re right about dependencies, but plasma-widget-globalmenu is not one of those. for kde, it’s sufficient to have kwin, libdbusmenu-qt, and appmenu-qt afaik. (there’s an option in system settings to show a menu button in the title bar, which is provided by kwin)

donniezazen wrote:

@flyingsheep You could install packages one by one and report back what works and what doesn't work. QT seems to implement it globally. GTK2 dependencies come from Ubuntu and I don't think GTK3 implementation is complete yet.

it’s Qt, not QT. QT is QuickTime.

and of course GTK3 works. ubuntu has global menus and GTK3 applications. i just don’t know what’s needed to make them work on arch.

ANOKNUSA · 2013-11-03 18:30:58

flying sheep wrote:

you’re right about dependencies, but plasma-widget-globalmenu is not one of those. for kde, it’s sufficient to have kwin, libdbusmenu-qt, and appmenu-qt afaik. (there’s an option in system settings to show a menu button in the title bar, which is provided by kwin)

I think cfr might have been implying that the option exists without those packages being installed.

ubuntu has global menus and GTK3 applications. i just don’t know what’s needed to make them work on arch.

Well, it would be the same things that make it work under Ubuntu. What you're looking for are ready-made packages, which might not yet exist. You may have to find out how the folks at Canonical did it, download the source, and make your own PKGBUILDs. There is, of course, the fact that Canonical exclusively supports Unity to consider...

flying sheep · 2013-11-03 19:36:17

ANOKNUSA wrote:

flying sheep wrote:
you’re right about dependencies, but plasma-widget-globalmenu is not one of those. for kde, it’s sufficient to have kwin, libdbusmenu-qt, and appmenu-qt afaik. (there’s an option in system settings to show a menu button in the title bar, which is provided by kwin)
I think cfr might have been implying that the option exists without those packages being installed.

no. as i said, it exists without plasma-widget-globalmenu, but needs the others.

ANOKNUSA wrote:

ubuntu has global menus and GTK3 applications. i just don’t know what’s needed to make them work on arch.
Well, it would be the same things that make it work under Ubuntu. What you're looking for are ready-made packages, which might not yet exist. You may have to find out how the folks at Canonical did it, download the source, and make your own PKGBUILDs. There is, of course, the fact that Canonical exclusively supports Unity to consider...

as i said there were packages, but some are norw deprecated without an alternative.

Primoz · 2013-11-03 20:55:59

Does anyone know anything new about the state of libreoffice extension for globalmenu?
Last time I checked (today) it didn't want to compile. Anyone else having similar problems?

ANOKNUSA · 2013-11-03 23:28:03

flying sheep wrote:

as i said there were packages, but some are norw deprecated without an alternative.

ANOKNUSA wrote:

What you're looking for are ready-made packages, which might not yet exist. You may have to find out how the folks at Canonical did it, download the source, and make your own PKGBUILDs.

If by "deprecated" you mean the projects themselves are dead, well, I don't know of any alternatives out there.

donniezazen · 2013-11-04 02:33:31

Where in the KDE settings does the option to enable global menu exist? I have always had to install kdeplasma-applets-menubar. Take for example, I don't have kdeplasma-applets-menubar installed and you can see this screenshot that there are not menubar settings.

@flyingsheep Why aren't you following the KDE wiki global menu section and report what doesn't work? All the suggested packages exist in official repository or AUR. Some of the dependencies' names have changed. Edit PKGBUILD with correct names and report to the AUR maintainers.

[x] http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2 … ecoration/
[x] http://www.bluemintlinux.com/2013/02/ho … -kwin.html

Last edited by donniezazen (2013-11-04 02:35:47)

cfr · 2013-11-04 04:13:47

Application Appearance > Style > Fine Tuning > Menubar > Menubarstyle

Options: In application, Title bar button, Top screen menubar, Only export

donniezazen · 2013-11-04 04:21:34

@cfr Do you have kdeplasma-applets-menubar,appmenu-qt5, appmenu-gtk, or appmenu-qt installed?

Those options only come in my system when kdeplasma-applets-menubar is installed. I have a very conservative system with kdebase and a some other packages.

cfr · 2013-11-04 04:30:11

appmenu-qt probably does it. Not sure why I have it as it is an optional dependency. I guess it sounded interesting.

donniezazen · 2013-11-04 04:58:41

Yep, it's appmenu-qt. You can't dock the menubar created by appmenu-qt in a panel. That's why you kind of need kdeplasma-applets-menubar.

Thaodan · 2013-11-04 10:25:40

cfr wrote:

Isn't this now an option within KDE itself? Don't know about other DEs.

Saidly the globalmenu is no longer an extension. Its now bound to the VCL GTK plugin (as in Firefox where you need a patch to globamenu support), I tried to use the GTK VCL plugin with KDE but the menus doesn't worked.

gnumdk · 2013-11-04 11:11:22

donniezazen wrote:

@cfr It's an option as long as you have dependencies installed. plasma-widget-globalmenu will enable options in KDE settings.

No, appmenu-qt will enable it.

gnumdk · 2013-11-04 11:13:36

Canonical now use GioMenuModel from Glib (GMenuModel was developped by Canonical).
KDE use appmenu/libdbusmenu.

I'm kded-appmenu maintainer, when i will have time, i will work on:
- Making a qt plugin for QioMenuModel (Qt GioMenuModel bindings)
- Port kded-appmenu to QioMenuModel

This will make globalmenu working with Gtk and Qt apps without any patchs...

flying sheep · 2013-11-04 11:51:04

donniezazen wrote:

Yep, it's appmenu-qt. You can't dock the menubar created by appmenu-qt in a panel. That's why you kind of need kdeplasma-applets-menubar.

or you can just choose the title bar button. in no way you need plasma-applets-menubar.

gnumdk wrote:

Canonical now use GioMenuModel from Glib (GMenuModel was developped by Canonical).
KDE use appmenu/libdbusmenu.
I'm kded-appmenu maintainer, when i will have time, i will work on:
- Making a qt plugin for QioMenuModel (Qt GioMenuModel bindings)
- Port kded-appmenu to QioMenuModel
This will make globalmenu working with Gtk and Qt apps without any patchs...

that would be amazing. even firefox?

donniezazen · 2013-11-04 16:06:41

I am curious what title bar button are you guys talking about?

@gnumdk Thanks that would be much appreciated.

flying sheep · 2013-11-04 17:47:07

donniezazen wrote:

I am curious what title bar button are you guys talking about?
@gnumdk Thanks that would be much appreciated.

please try at least, next time.

the literally first google result for "kde global menu" is this.

and in case you don’t see the button afterwards: it can of course be added to the title bar at the same place where all titlebar buttons are managed: here

Last edited by flying sheep (2013-11-04 17:48:17)

flying sheep · 2013-11-05 11:01:54

ok, so i found out that unity-gtk-module is needed for GTK+ applications that don’t want to upgrade to a new API. for all who do use G[io]MenuModel, libdbusmenu-glib, libdbusmenu-gtk3 should be enough (no appmenu-gtk{,2,3} necessary)

for Qt applications, still only libdbusmenu-qt and appmenu-qt are needed.

firefox needs this patch: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619899

is this right so far? i’m sure about Qt, but not so much about the rest.

Thaodan · 2013-11-05 12:05:50

Qt needs no patches

Thaodan · 2013-11-05 12:07:41

gnumdk wrote:

Canonical now use GioMenuModel from Glib (GMenuModel was developped by Canonical).
KDE use appmenu/libdbusmenu.
I'm kded-appmenu maintainer, when i will have time, i will work on:
- Making a qt plugin for QioMenuModel (Qt GioMenuModel bindings)
- Port kded-appmenu to QioMenuModel
This will make globalmenu working with Gtk and Qt apps without any patchs...

What was the problem with appmenu (except patching GTK)?
Will the globalmenu stuff in LO work with KDE if the port is done?

flying sheep · 2013-11-05 14:11:14

Thaodan wrote:

Qt needs no patches

nobody said it did.

Last edited by flying sheep (2013-11-05 14:11:24)

flying sheep · 2013-11-05 16:06:45

aaah, now i got it. the dbus protocol exposed by the appmenu-* packages is apparently the “old way”, and G(io)MenuModel is the new thing: so we need 1. a frontend (menu button or plasma-widget-menubar) and 2. a backend (each application)

if an application is created using GTK3 and the G(io)MenuModel, and there is a frontend (like the unity’s hlobal menu) it works the new way;

what’s currently working on KDE is the old way, and since GNOME/GTK+ applications are migrating away, all that stuff is deprecated.

so for KDE to support the new way, it needs at least to make the frontends (menu displaying widgets) consume G(io)MenuModel-created menus, and use unity-gtk-module to translate the old-style menu protocol to the new one. next step would be to make appmenu-qt directly emit G(io)MenuModel style menus whicht then directly get rendered by the frontend. after that, only applications using an old version of GTK2/3 or which use the old-style libdbusmenu directly would have to rely on unity-gtk-module to have their menus displayed.

Last edited by flying sheep (2013-11-05 16:12:04)

Arch Linux

#1 2013-11-02 15:04:21

The state of global menus

#2 2013-11-03 04:12:35

Re: The state of global menus

#3 2013-11-03 06:30:10

Re: The state of global menus

#4 2013-11-03 16:16:17

Re: The state of global menus

#5 2013-11-03 18:16:27

Re: The state of global menus

#6 2013-11-03 18:30:58

Re: The state of global menus

#7 2013-11-03 19:36:17

Re: The state of global menus

#8 2013-11-03 20:55:59

Re: The state of global menus

#9 2013-11-03 23:28:03

Re: The state of global menus

#10 2013-11-04 02:33:31

Re: The state of global menus

#11 2013-11-04 04:13:47

Re: The state of global menus

#12 2013-11-04 04:21:34

Re: The state of global menus

#13 2013-11-04 04:30:11

Re: The state of global menus

#14 2013-11-04 04:58:41

Re: The state of global menus

#15 2013-11-04 10:25:40

Re: The state of global menus

#16 2013-11-04 11:11:22

Re: The state of global menus

#17 2013-11-04 11:13:36

Re: The state of global menus

#18 2013-11-04 11:51:04

Re: The state of global menus

#19 2013-11-04 16:06:41

Re: The state of global menus

#20 2013-11-04 17:47:07

Re: The state of global menus

#21 2013-11-05 11:01:54

Re: The state of global menus

#22 2013-11-05 12:05:50

Re: The state of global menus

#23 2013-11-05 12:07:41

Re: The state of global menus

#24 2013-11-05 14:11:14

Re: The state of global menus

#25 2013-11-05 16:06:45

Re: The state of global menus

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