myGtkMenu
a custom menu for Linux
Why settle for just one menu?
When myGtkMenu is executed it reads a text file and creates a menu. The order of the menu items, which icons are used, and the commands to be executed are specified in the text file. You control the text file. Indeed, you could have ten icons associated with ten (different) custom menus. To make a custom menu you create a MenuDescription file and add a panel (or desktop) launcher that runs "myGtkMenu MenuDescription".
As of December 2023, the latest version of myGtkMenu is 1.4. MyGtkMenu-1.4 uses GTK+3 libraries.
MyGtkMenu is in a stable state and does not change very often. I have used myGtkMenu-1.3 on Fedora 15 through 33 (XFCE). While the executible still works (spring-2021), it needs modifications to compile. Time for a new version. Version 1.4 adds an option to change the font size. And now '~/' is expanded to $HOME/. I would like to thank Jean-Pierre Demailly for showing me how to replace the deprecated-function gtk_menu_popup and how to easily change the menu font size. I modified his code so if something in main.c looks wrong don't blame him.
myGtkMenu-1.4.tar.bz2Old Version:
Suggestions:
Use hot keys. In XFCE4, for example, the keyboard setting dialog can be used to connect "/PATH1/myGtkMenu /PATH2/mainMenu.txt" to <Super-L>. One can then start a command prompt by pressing <Super-L> to open myGtkMenu and then <t> (for menu item Terminal). Many of the author's menu items run scripts and it only takes two key presses to start them. For example, <Super-L> followed by <f> runs a script which selects workplace #1 and starts firefox.
Use icons of reasonable size. If myGtkMenu has to input a huge image and then scale it, things will slow down. Many paint programs have the ability to easily re-scale images.
Make a sub directory called, for example, "Icons/" and place a copy of your favorite icons in that directory. Then create a directory called 'myMenus/' and put myGtkMenu, the custom MenuDescription file(s), and the directory Icons/ into myMenus/. Having all the pieces in one directory makes it easy to backup and restore your menu(s).
This page last updated on December 02, 2023.