Mac-style Menu Bar for GTK and Java/Swing applications!

[AqD]

Well it's been 12 hours as of this post so it's either tonight or tommorrow morning already.

I was playing et last night anyway it's done now

Panel applet for gnome 2.16:



Source and data files: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.ph...ails=1&ID=7070

Binary builds for i686 are there => http://people.os-zen.net/aqd/repository/ (you need gtk2-aqd and gnome-macmenu-applet)

They're arch linux packages (.tar.gz) but should also work for other distros. To install, first make sure you already have gtk+ 2.10 and gnome, then untar the .tar.gz files and copy all non-dotfiles. If you install to a different gnome location, remember to change the line#3 "location="/opt/gnome/libexec/gnome-macmenu-applet" in opt/gnome/lib/bonobo/servers/GNOME_MacMenuApplet.server (for gtk+ 2.8, see the first post for patch, or use others' dapper packages)

To move or remove the applet, move mouse pointer to the rightmost place of the menubar, where you will see something appearing like a flat button, then left-click on it (don't release button until you select the menu item)

right-click for panel menu works only when there is no focused window.

Problems and solutions:

1. GNOME/GTK2 apps' menubars cannot be restored to the original state once you use this applet. However, they wouldn't die even if the applet/panel crashes - restarting gnome-panel will catch them back.
2. After you restart the panel, the menubar of currently active window may not be visible, unfocus/focus (or shade/unshade) the main window will make it appear again
3. Restarting metacity may cause some menubars to disappear - restarting gnome-panel will solve this
4. If your application crashes when the applet/panel quits, use my latest gtk2 patch/binary (for gtk 2.10 and 2.8).

Cheers!

Edit: the links provided in this post are not valid any longer.

[agotfred]

Thanks a lot. About to give it a go now.

[agotfred]

Ok, it seemed to work, until after I restarted my gnome panel. Gnome panel would crash on launch instantly after I installed a patched version of GTK, be it compiled by myself or your binary package. Once I restored to the ubuntu gtk, gnome panel worked fine again.

[AqD]

Ok, it seemed to work, until after I restarted my gnome panel. Gnome panel would crash on launch instantly after I installed a patched version of GTK, be it compiled by myself or your binary package. Once I restored to the ubuntu gtk, gnome panel worked fine again.

You need to remove the "menu bar" applet from gnome-panel. It doesn't work with my gtk2 patch.

[agotfred]

Oh, I see. Any reason why it's broken? =)

[jannol]

I had some problems rebuilding my libgtk's but now it works again and the applet is very nice but AqD I have a small issue.

When I open an app or window that doesn't have menubars as default the menubar is still there but for the last focused windows I used, this didn't happen with the first gtkmenubar.diff, is it my system that broke something or is there anything I can change in the diff?

This happen with both the standalone and the applet.

But hey, impressive work man.

[AqD]

I had some problems rebuilding my libgtk's but now it works again and the applet is very nice but AqD I have a small issue.

When I open an app or window that doesn't have menubars as default the menubar is still there but for the last focused windows I used, this didn't happen with the first gtkmenubar.diff, is it my system that broke something or is there anything I can change in the diff?

This happen with both the standalone and the applet.

But hey, impressive work man.

Ah, what WM are you using? And do you have the latest 2.10.x patch (submitted 3 days ago)?

It works here, with xfce 4.4, gnome 2.16, and blackbox. The code has been made more complex after first release, to make the menubar suffient itself (without panels). But it should not display previous menubar (not visible ) anyway unless the WM is broken or you get a bad patch

[AqD]

Oh, I see. Any reason why it's broken? =)

The patch is to re-assign the parent of menubar to a new toplevel window, similar to what KDE's mac menubar does.

This approach is only intended to work with normal apps using normal method. But menubar itself in gtk is not a special high-level widget for each application, but a common one that you can put to any place (ex: you can have several menubars into a button or label).

Some dev said I could/should do it in the high-level UI manager provided by gtk, which would not break any apps. But most non-gnome programs do not use it and I can't ask them to....

[agotfred]

Ok. I have another bug though, when using Compiz or Beryl I can't use the menubar. If I use metacity it works fine.

Also here's a suggestion, the mac menu bar is quite hard to handle and place on the gnome bars, improving it's usability would be very nice, but that is up to you of course.

[thekaleb]

I cannot seem to get the .diff patches to work. I am new to this. If somebody could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.