ApplicationWindowProtocol

public protocol ApplicationWindowProtocol : ActionGroupProtocol, ActionMapProtocol, WindowProtocol

GtkApplicationWindow is a GtkWindow subclass that offers some extra functionality for better integration with GtkApplication features. Notably, it can handle both the application menu as well as the menubar. See gtk_application_set_app_menu() and gtk_application_set_menubar().

This class implements the GActionGroup and GActionMap interfaces, to let you add window-specific actions that will be exported by the associated GtkApplication, together with its application-wide actions. Window-specific actions are prefixed with the “win.” prefix and application-wide actions are prefixed with the “app.” prefix. Actions must be addressed with the prefixed name when referring to them from a GMenuModel.

Note that widgets that are placed inside a GtkApplicationWindow can also activate these actions, if they implement the GtkActionable interface.

As with GtkApplication, the GDK lock will be acquired when processing actions arriving from other processes and should therefore be held when activating actions locally (if GDK threads are enabled).

The settings GtkSettings:gtk-shell-shows-app-menu and GtkSettings:gtk-shell-shows-menubar tell GTK+ whether the desktop environment is showing the application menu and menubar models outside the application as part of the desktop shell. For instance, on OS X, both menus will be displayed remotely; on Windows neither will be. gnome-shell (starting with version 3.4) will display the application menu, but not the menubar.

If the desktop environment does not display the menubar, then GtkApplicationWindow will automatically show a GtkMenuBar for it. This behaviour can be overridden with the GtkApplicationWindow:show-menubar property. If the desktop environment does not display the application menu, then it will automatically be included in the menubar or in the windows client-side decorations.

A GtkApplicationWindow with a menubar

(C Language Example):

GtkApplication *app = gtk_application_new ("org.gtk.test", 0);

GtkBuilder *builder = gtk_builder_new_from_string (
    "<interface>"
    "  <menu id='menubar'>"
    "    <submenu label='_Edit'>"
    "      <item label='_Copy' action='win.copy'/>"
    "      <item label='_Paste' action='win.paste'/>"
    "    </submenu>"
    "  </menu>"
    "</interface>",
    -1);

GMenuModel *menubar = G_MENU_MODEL (gtk_builder_get_object (builder,
                                                            "menubar"));
gtk_application_set_menubar (GTK_APPLICATION (app), menubar);
g_object_unref (builder);

// ...

GtkWidget *window = gtk_application_window_new (app);

Handling fallback yourself

A simple example

The XML format understood by GtkBuilder for GMenuModel consists of a toplevel <menu> element, which contains one or more <item> elements. Each <item> element contains <attribute> and <link> elements with a mandatory name attribute. <link> elements have the same content model as <menu>. Instead of <link name="submenu> or <link name="section">, you can use <submenu> or <section> elements.

Attribute values can be translated using gettext, like other GtkBuilder content. <attribute> elements can be marked for translation with a translatable="yes" attribute. It is also possible to specify message context and translator comments, using the context and comments attributes. To make use of this, the GtkBuilder must have been given the gettext domain to use.

The following attributes are used when constructing menu items:

• “label”: a user-visible string to display
• “action”: the prefixed name of the action to trigger
• “target”: the parameter to use when activating the action
• “icon” and “verb-icon”: names of icons that may be displayed
• “submenu-action”: name of an action that may be used to determine if a submenu can be opened
• “hidden-when”: a string used to determine when the item will be hidden. Possible values include “action-disabled”, “action-missing”, “macos-menubar”.

The following attributes are used when constructing sections:

• “label”: a user-visible string to use as section heading
• “display-hint”: a string used to determine special formatting for the section. Possible values include “horizontal-buttons”.
• “text-direction”: a string used to determine the GtkTextDirection to use when “display-hint” is set to “horizontal-buttons”. Possible values include “rtl”, “ltr”, and “none”.

The following attributes are used when constructing submenus:

• “label”: a user-visible string to display
• “icon”: icon name to display

The ApplicationWindowProtocol protocol exposes the methods and properties of an underlying GtkApplicationWindow instance. The default implementation of these can be found in the protocol extension below. For a concrete class that implements these methods and properties, see ApplicationWindow. Alternatively, use ApplicationWindowRef as a lighweight, unowned reference if you already have an instance you just want to use.