[Tkinter-discuss] a couple of mac menu problems

[Kevin Walzer]

What version of OS X?

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 15, 2012, at 2:06 PM, Lynn Oliver <raycores at gmail.com> wrote:

> Along the same lines, I managed to get application/preferences to work on the Mac, but while application/about shows the name of my Python app (built with pyinstaller), it displays the 'Tcl & Tk' dialog.  
> 
> The TkDocs-TK Tutorial on menus shows this as a TODO item (http://www.tkdocs.com/tutorial/menus.html).  While I was able to figure out the preferences menu by looking at the idlelib sources, I couldn't get the application/about menu to work.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Lynn
> On Jun 15, 2012, at 6:45 AM, Kevin Walzer wrote:
> 
>> Hi Mark,
>> 
>> Please see my answers below:
>> 
>> 
>>> Here's a bit of code used to create the Help menu:
>>> 
>>>    if MAC:
>>>    self.master.createcommand("tkAboutDialog", self.about_action)
>>>    self.master.createcommand("::tk::mac::ShowHelp",
>>>        self.help_action)
>>>    helpMenu = tk.Menu(self.menubar, name="help")
>>>    helpMenu.add_command(label="Help", underline=0,
>>>        command=self.help_action)
>>>    if not MAC:
>>>    helpMenu.add_command(label="About", underline=0,
>>>        command=self.about_action)
>>>    self.menubar.add_cascade(label="Help", underline=0,
>>>        menu=helpMenu)
>> 
>> There's some magic in the Tk-Cocoa help menu--if you define the tk::mac::showHelp command and map it to your function that calls user help, you don't need to add a separate entry for help. (There's already an entry hard-coded for help, along with the search field.) So the helpMenu.add_Command(label="Help")... stuff is redundant.
>> 
>>> I end up with these menus:
>>> 
>>>    ActivePython3.2
>>>    About ActivePython3.2 # correctly invokes my about action
>> 
>> If you're just running the app from Python and not wrapping it with a tool such as py2app, this is the expected behavior.  The "about" menu picks up the name of the executable from its info.plist file, which in this case is Python.
>> 
>>> 
>>>    Help
>>>    Search # some apple-specific thing that just appears
>>>    ActivePython3.2 Help # invokes my help action
>>>    Help                 # invokes my help action
>> 
>>> 
>>> Problems:
>>> 
>>> (1) I don't know how to rename the "ActivePython3.2" menu to "My App".
>>> (2) I don't know how to rename the "About ActivePython3.2" menu option
>>>    to "About" or "About My App".
>> 
>> See above--you need to wrap this as a standalone app using py2app or cx_freeze.
>> 
>>> (3) I don't know how to eliminate the "ActivePython3.2 Help" menu option.
>>>    If I don't do helpMenu.add_command() on the Mac that menu has no
>>>    items ('cos the About is in the ActivePython3.2 menu) and so the
>>>    Help menu doesn't appear at all.
>> 
>> If you don't add any items to the help menu but just define it, I would expect to see an entry called "ActivePython 3.2 Help" that calls up a dialog which says, "Help isn't available for ActivePython 3.2."
>> 
>> This is how I set up my help menu is one of my Python apps:
>> 
>>            self.createcommand('::tk::mac::ShowHelp', self.runHelp)
>> 
>>      self.helpmenu = Menu(self.mb, name='_help')
>>       self.mb.add_cascade(label='Help', menu=self.helpmenu)
>>       self.helpmenu.add_command(label='Phynchronicity Help', command=self.runHelp)
>>       self.helpmenu.add_command(label='Contact Code by Kevin', command=self.getHelp)
>>       self.helpmenu.add_command(label='Web Site', command=self.getWebSite)
>>       self.helpmenu.add_command(label='User Forum', command=self.getUserForum)
>>       self.helpmenu.add_command(label='Newsletter', command=self.getNewsletter)
>> 
>> Hope this helps,
>> Kevin
>> 
>> -- 
>> Kevin Walzer
>> Code by Kevin
>> http://www.codebykevin.com
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