Get rid of NewApplication in a dynamic way?

Question

Hi,

I'm distributing two different versions of one product (like light and pro version). I don't know how to use the same MainMenu.xib if I can not change the placeholder NewApplication in a dynamic way. I would like to use the bundle name instead of "NewApplication". I hope there is an official way to do this without hacking.

Thank you,

Answer 1

You most likely want to use the multiple-targets route; use a single Xcode project with several build targets, one for your regular app and one for your lite version. See here. (And yes, this is officially supported in Xcode, and I know of several app developers who use this strategy to publish both versions of their app on the App Store.)

Answer 2

I'd do it like this:

NSMenu *menuBar = [NSApp mainMenu];
// we know that the application is always at the very left
NSMenu *applicationMenu = [menuBar itemAtIndex:0];
// we know that the quit-menu item is always the last element
NSMenuItem *quitMenuItem = [applicationMenu itemAtIndex:
                                  [applicationMenu numberOfItems] - 1];

quitMenuItem.title = [quitMenuItem.title
                    stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"NewApplication"
                                              withString:@"SomeOtherName"];

You could also set tags on the menu items you want to change.

Answer 3

Inspired from the answer of gs, here is what I have added to my code. I'm calling setupBundleNameInMenuBar in AppDelegate's awakeFromNib.

This code will replace all occurrence of "NewApplication" with the application name.

- (void)setupBundleNameInMenuBar {
    NSString *appName = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary] objectForKey:(NSString *)kCFBundleNameKey];
    if (appName == nil) appName = [[NSProcessInfo processInfo] processName];

    NSMenu *menuBar = [NSApp mainMenu];
    for (NSMenuItem *menuItem in [menuBar itemArray])
        [self replaceTitlePlaceholderInMenuItem: menuItem withString: appName];
}

- (void)replaceTitlePlaceholderInMenuItem:(NSMenuItem *)root withString:(NSString *)appName {
    root.title = [root.title stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString: @"NewApplication"
                                                       withString: appName];

    NSArray *submenuItems = [root.submenu itemArray];
    for (NSMenuItem *menuItem in submenuItems)
        [self replaceTitlePlaceholderInMenuItem: menuItem withString: appName];
}