Using GtkPopoverMenu as a GtkMenu replacement

[ebassi (Emmanuele Bassi)]

@carrotIndustries

Selection needs to follow the cursor. As far as I can tell only treeviews support this and treeviews don’t seem to be the right solution for this problem.

I don’t understand what this means.

@carrotIndustries

The popover needs to close when releasing the the mouse button outside of the menu.

You can use GtkPopover:autohide.

@carrotIndustries

Is there a technical reason for omitting this from Gtk4?

Well, for one we can’t move a widget out of process, so we can’t really do that. Since the API is the same, we would not be able to distinguish the case.

From an API perspective, adding widgets is a generic code path; when setting a menu model, we are going to add widgets internally, so we can’t distinguish between a widget that was added by you and one added by a model, unless we make the code more brittle. Then it becomes a case of erroring out with a critical warning if you decide to add a widget to a menu that was populate by a model.

In practice, I think you’re kind of overstating your case. There’s nothing that inherently requires that you use menus and/or menu semantics for your UI outside of a main menu bar. We have widgets like overlays to put complex widgets on top of the content area; and popovers, when you need menu-like behaviour.

In some, niche cases, it may require changing how your code is structured, or changing your UI; it can be problematic or it can be a chance to rethink some of the user experience.

You also don’t need to port to GTK4 right away: GTK3 isn’t going anywhere. Maybe in a couple of years we’re going to have more convenience API that will make your use case easier to port to.

[carrotIndustries (Lukas K.)]

@ebassi

I don’t understand what this means.

In menus, the item the cursor is over is displayed inverted (dark/blue background, light text). Listboxes only display items in this style if it was selected by clicking.

@ebassi

You can use GtkPopover:autohide .

Reading the docs, this only appears to apply to clicks, not to letting go of the mouse button.

@ebassi

You also don’t need to port to GTK4 right away: GTK3 isn’t going anywhere. Maybe in a couple of years we’re going to have more convenience API that will make your use case easier to port to.

Well, since I’m not going to simultaneously maintain a GTK3 and GTK4 version of my app, I’ll have to wait until Gtk 4 is available in all major distros, especially the more slow-moving ones. Rather than complaining when Gtk4 has reached maturity, I prefer getting the discussion going as early as possible.

@ebassi

and popovers, when you need menu-like behaviour.

If that’s an option, popovers should be able to faithfully emulate the behavior of GtkMenu such as activating an item when letting go of the mouse button.

@ebassi

when setting a menu model, we are going to add widgets internally, so we can’t distinguish between a widget that was added by you and one added by a model,

GtkListBox is good example that manually adding widgets and setting models can coexist. Just make it clear that widgets shouldn’t be touched if a model is set.