"Global Menu" doesn't work for Musescore 4 on linux.

• Nov 29, 2022 - 17:24

A Global Menu is a linux term for a macOS -like app menu (File Edit View etc.) displayed in the top bar, rather than inside the window itself. I believe Musescore is built with Qt, and because of that seems to play well in that regard with KDE Plasma desktop with versions 2 and 3, but not the upcoming 4. The screen shots demonstrate how the three versions appear on Kubuntu 22.04. The last screen shot is how the Musescore 4 looks on macOS (pulled from a YT video). I would really love the Musescore 4 to support this feature on Linux!


Comments

MuseScore 4 is still built with Qt but has reimplemented most of the UI components itself, using QML. So I suspect that whatever hooks Qt and KDE might have arranged between themselves, won't work anymore. I suspect it would take a KDE expert to implement its special magic into the new menu system. But that's just educated guessing.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

It's not just KDE. I don't know how Linux DE's extract those menus to display them outside the window, but KDE and Qt usually just work, when the program 'publishes' (I don't know the correct term) it's menu to the system. Exception being the new Qt 6, which is not yet supported by KDE, but I believe the Musescore 4 is still on 5. I also tested this on the Unity desktop, which was built around this functionality with the same result.

I tried one of the older builds of MS4, and found that even the Close - Minimise - Maximise buttons used to be drawn by the program, not the system (here they should be on the left, as they are set in the DE, but appear wrong). Could it be that MS4 at the moment simply draws it's own menus, the way Firefox on Linux does - it used to support the Global Menu but now doesn't and displays it's own when Alt is pressed, and also draws it's own close-minimise-maximise buttons if chosen (you can see the missmatched style because of that).

One other observation I had was that sometimes the .appimage format would not work with the Global Menu for whatever reason especially on other desktops, but I can't install the app any other way right now. Maybe I'll compile it from source later to see if it makes any difference. But then again - Qt and KDE usually work very well together, as KDE is built with Qt.

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