What's the practical/standard way to share a QMenuBar for the whole application?

w3bvkas9

Hi,

Title. I want a single QMenuBar to be shared by all widgets/windows in my application, like a macOS menu bar (see What's the cross-platform way to create a QMenuBar?). In this menu bar, QActions should be enabled or disabled depending on the active window. What's the standard way to do this and where can I learn more about this? I fill a bit lost with this.

Thanks a lot and let me know if I can help in any way.

SGaist

Hi,

AFAIK, there's no standard way. But personally I would find it strange that the QMenuBar content changes when I switch from one widget to another.

It's rather something I would expect from a QToolBar associated with the widget.

Can you explain your use case ?

w3bvkas9

Thanks. If you know of certain ways to do it, I would very much appreciate a link to an example or resources.

I was not clear: the content of the menu bar does not change; QMenus and QActions are always the same. Rather, the fact that a given QAction is enabled or not changes with the windows.

I do not like tool bars very much because they become very bloated when you have a lot of options. Also, menu bars make organizing stuff easy. My use case is the following: I have a main window and auxiliary windows (preferences widget, etc). Actions enabled for the main window should not be for the auxiliary windows.

I want the menu bar to stay the same everywhere because I feel like having different menu bars makes it hard to remember where is each option (e.g. in the software Anki).

EDIT: And how can you have a QMenuBar if you don't have any QMainWindow on screen?

SGaist

For the action state, you can use the enter/leaveEvent method for example.

Depending on how these widgets are managed, you may also tie the action enabled state to the widget visibility.

Which OS are you targeting ?

w3bvkas9

Ok, I will keep this in mind and so some research.

We target Linux, macOS and Windows!

SGaist

@w3bvkas9 said in What's the practical/standard way to share a QMenuBar for the whole application?:

EDIT: And how can you have a QMenuBar if you don't have any QMainWindow on screen?

QMenuBar is a widget that you can use with other widgets. QMainWindow has it integrated.

w3bvkas9

Thanks. I think you answered the question, please feel free to add anything later if you want. I mark it as solved.