[SOLVED] Simulating menu bar blink in Cocoa

FROM : John Stiles
DATE : Fri Apr 18 23:25:15 2008

The "fake temporary item" solution actually works pretty well. It's the
last thing I'd call elegant, but here's how you can blink a menu title
in Cocoa.
This assumes that you aren't actually assigning the command+F35 key
equivalent to any of your menu items... hopefully a safe assumption for
the time being :)


- (void) blink {
    const unichar  f35Key = NSF35FunctionKey;
    NSString*      f35String = [NSString stringWithCharacters:&f35Key
length:1];
    int            position = [myMenu numberOfItems];
 
    NSMenuItem* item = [[[NSMenuItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"* blink *"
                                                  action:NULL
                                            keyEquivalent:f35String]
autorelease];

    [item setTarget:NULL];
    [myMenu insertItem:item atIndex:position];

    NSEvent * f35Event = [NSEvent keyEventWithType:NSKeyDown
                                          location:NSZeroPoint
                                    modifierFlags:NSCommandKeyMask
                                        timestamp:0
                                      windowNumber:0
                                          context:[NSGraphicsContext
currentContext]
                                        characters:f35String
                      charactersIgnoringModifiers:f35String
                                        isARepeat:NO
                                          keyCode:0];
 
    [myMenu performKeyEquivalent:f35Event];
 
    [myMenu removeItemAtIndex:position];
}



John Stiles wrote:
> Reading the list archives a little more, it looks like there may be
> two ways to do this:
>
> - _NSHighlightCarbonMenu and _NSUnhighlightCarbonMenu are SPIs which
> take an NSMenu* and do exactly what you'd expect
> - You can add a fake temporary menu item to your menu, with a suitably
> bizarre key equivalent and no target or action. Then use NSMenu
> -performKeyEquivalent: to simulate its selection.
>
> Wow, great choices here :| I'm going to try #2 first since it's not
> SPI. I'll inform the list of the results.
>
>
> John Stiles wrote:

>> John Stiles wrote:

>>> Randall Meadows wrote:

>>>> On Apr 17, 2008, at 11:54 AM, John Stiles wrote:

>>>>> As previously explained here, I'm handling hotkeys in my app via
>>>>> custom code in order to work around some AppKit bugs.
>>>>>
>>>>> How can I simulate the menu-title blink effect using Cocoa? In
>>>>> Carbon, it's FlashMenuBar(menuID) but I don't see a Cocoa equivalent.

>>>>
>>>> NSMenuView's -performActionWithHighlightingForItemAtIndex:?
>>>>
>>>> (Never used it, just looked it up...)

>>> This is at the top of the file:
>>>
>>>    Note: NSMenuView is deprecated and is no longer used to draw
>>> menus. Calling its methods will not affect the appearance of your
>>> menus.
>>>
>>> I don't think this will work.  Actually I don't think there is even
>>> a way to get a valid NSMenuView* at all.

>> For the curious, I tried the next best thing—NSMenu's
>> -performActionForItemAtIndex: —and this API does not appear to
>> simulate the menu blink, although it arguably should.
>>

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