DRAFT: proof of concept for global menus

[dkondor]

Partially addresses #2367

This is a draft so far, since the functionality is very basic and only works for GTK3 apps. I would eventually prefer exposing this via the wlr-foreign-toplevel-management protocol.

So far, this allows reporting the DBus properties set by gtk-shell to IPC clients (new event: view-gtk-dbus-properties-changed).

So far I've included an example client that displays the menus of the active app: wf_gtk_global_menu.py (once this PR is closer to ready, I'd move this to a separate repo, or open a separate PR in pywayfire).
Currently, this only works with GTK3 apps. To use this:

1. Install appmenu-gtk3-module
2. Run python3 wf_gtk_global_menu.py (it needs to start before any app whose menu to show)
3. Start a GTK3 app with setting the environment variable GTK_MODULES=appmenu-gtk-module
4. Focus the app (you might need to change focus for things to work); its app-id should show up in the "Active app" field
5. Select "Show menu"

Next steps:

• add also the KDE appmenu protocol (it would allow global menus for Qt apps)
• experiment with adding a new event for the wlr-foreign-toplevel-management protocol (similar to this) to make using this easier for panels without relying on Wayfire's IPC
• likely this would require storing the properties (app_menu_path, menubar_path, etc.) so they can be reported for already running apps as well

[soreau]

If I understand correctly, here is some prior art, pre-ipc era: https://github.com/soreau/wf-extra-protos

[dkondor]

If I understand correctly, here is some prior art, pre-ipc era: https://github.com/soreau/wf-extra-protos

Thanks for looking into this! I think these are orthogonal, since here the menu content is supplied by the app; see also e.g. Alexays/Waybar#288

[soreau]

Thanks for looking into this! I think these are orthogonal, since here the menu content is supplied by the app; see also e.g. Alexays/Waybar#288

That seems like a nice concept! I at least know that users want right-click menu functionality whether it be on the desktop, window titlebar or even the taskbar/window-list with more than just minimize/maximize/close (like send window to workspace or desktop menu change workspace).

@dkondor I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all of your contributions. They help make wayfire continuously better. Keep up the good work!

[dkondor]

Closing in favor of #2576