How to draw my own key equivalents in NSMenuItem?

Question

I would need something this owner drawn tab completition key equivalents in my own code. Like TextMate does in this example.

I heared that the menu drawing is Carbon based but I don't hope it is such a huge hack.

But whatever I tried and wherever I looked I couldn't find a clue.

EDIT: I'm willing to accept even a carbon based answer, just anything that runs on version >= 10.4

Answer 1

One way to accomplish this is to draw the item yourself. I am not sure if there is a way to just override the drawing on the key equivalent. Take a look at the MenuItemView sample code.

Answer 2

The menubar, even in 10.6, is still based on Carbon. At the Carbon level, there is an API (see below) that lets you set whatever key equivalent you want on the menuitem regardless of whether the app actually maps that key equivalent to the menuitem. In other words, Carbon lets you adjust the display of the menuitem independently of the behavior. Using this API, you can set whatever keyboard shortcut you want the menuitem to display.

Unfortunately it seems the documentation for this API is no more. But you can still read the header file. I believe the API you want is in /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Headers/Menus.h. I know HIToolbox is not 64-bit, but I suspect the menu API must still be, given that the Cocoa menus are still based on the Carbon menus.