I've a cocoa app based on NSDocument, I've two types of document. Every document type has its own menu items, all items are defined in mainmenu.xib. As defined in Apple UI guidelines the menu items irrelevant for a doc type are shown grayed.
I have too much menu items so I want to show only relevant items per doc type, another problem is created by the key bindings, for doc type A a particular key binding is associated to a menu item but for doc type B the same key bindind is associated to another menu item but this isn't possible because XCode detects the same key is already used and it removes (correctly) from previous item definition.
I want to create a menu similar to XCode's 'Editor' menu, it shows some items when focus is on a text window and a totally different item set when focus is on a IB file.
Are there best practices? For example splitting menus. How can I easily create a menu similar to XCode's 'Editor' menu? Which API cocoa gives us to do it?
You can create the separate menu(s) in the MainMenu.xib and create outlets to them from the App Controller. Then when your document gains focus (see windowDidBecomeMain (reference)), you tell the App controller to switch-out the relevant parts of the main menu.
Switching-out the parts of the main menu is done by trawling the main menu hierarchy and assigning the separate menu at the right place (i.e. [NSMenuItem setSubmenu:] (reference)). You can make this easier for yourself by setting tags, using Interface Builder, in those menu items and then using [NSMenu itemWithTag:] (reference) to find them programmatically.