BMenuBar

A BMenuBar is a menu that can stand at the root of a menu hierarchy. Rather than appear on-screen when commanded to do so by a user action, a BMenuBar object has a settled location in a window’s view hierarchy, just like other views. Typically, the root menu is the menu bar that’s drawn across the top of the window. It’s from this use that the class gets its name.

However, instances of this class can also be used in other ways. A BMenuBar might simply display a list of items arranged in a column somewhere in a window. Or it might contain just one item, where that item controls a pop-up menu (a BPopUpMenu object). Rather than look like a “menu bar,” the BMenuBar object would look something like a button.

The Key Menu Bar

The “real” menu bar at the top of the window usually represents an extensive menu hierarchy; each of its items typically controls a submenu.

The user should be able to operate this menu bar from the keyboard (using the arrow keys and Enter). There are two ways that the user can put the BMenuBar and its hierarchy in focus for keyboard events:

• Clicking an item in the menu bar. If the “click to open” preference is not turned off, this opens the submenu the item controls so that it stays visible on-screen and puts the submenu in focus.

• Pressing the Menu key or Command+Escape. This puts the BMenuBar in focus and selects its first item.

Either method opens the entire menu hierarchy to keyboard navigation.

If a window’s view hierarchy includes more than one BMenuBar object, the Menu key (or Command+Escape) must choose one of them to put in focus. By default, it picks the last one that was attached to the window. However, the SetKeyMenuBar() function defined in the BWindow class can be called to designate a different BMenuBar object as the “key” menu bar for the window.

A Kind of BMenu

BMenuBar inherits most of its functions from the BMenu class. It reimplements the AttachedToWindow(), Draw(), and MouseDown(), functions that set up the object and respond to messages, but these aren’t functions that you’d call from application code; they’re called for you.

The only real function (other than the constructor) that the BMenuBar class adds to those it inherits is SetBorder(), which determines how the list of items is bordered.

Therefore, for most BMenuBar operations—adding submenus, finding items, temporarily disabling the menu bar, and so on—you must call inherited functions and treat the object like the BMenu that it is.