Qt: QAction doesn't appear in menu if the constructor string starts with the substring "about"

Question

Are certain strings treated differently by the QAction constructor? This is very strange - if the QString in the constructor begins with "About" that seems to make the QAction invisible in the menu.

This snipped is within a method of a child class of QMainWindow:

mFileMenu = new QMenu(tr("&File"), mMenuBar);
mFileMenu->addAction(new QAction(tr("Export &Data"), mFileMenu)); // appears
mFileMenu->addAction(new QAction(tr("About"), mFileMenu)); // doesn't appear
mFileMenu->addAction(new QAction(tr("Abouut"), mFileMenu)); // appears
mFileMenu->addAction(new QAction(tr("Abouto"), mFileMenu)); // doesn't appear
mFileMenu->addAction(new QAction(tr("_About"), mFileMenu)); // appears
menuBar()->addMenu(mFileMenu);

Can someone explain this behavior?

Try to add new action with `mFileMenu->addAction(new QAction(tr("About")));` instead. — vahancho, Sep 06 '14 at 21:22
there's no constructor with a string without a parent. However using 0 for the parent pointer results in the same behavior. — daj, Sep 06 '14 at 21:31
I cannot reproduce this issue neither with nor without parent. Please provide more details about the problem. — vahancho, Sep 06 '14 at 21:37

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 07 '14 at 02:20

If you are on Mac there is a note on the docs:

Qt for Mac OS X also provides a menu bar merging feature to make QMenuBar conform more closely to accepted Mac OS X menu bar layout.

The merging functionality is based on string matching the title of a QMenu entry. These strings are translated (using QObject::tr()) in the "QMenuBar" context.

If an entry is moved its slots will still fire as if it was in the original place.

The table below outlines the strings looked for and where the entry is placed if matched:

note

So the action does not disappeared anyway, this was placed on the application menu as a you can see in the following example:

enter image description here

Qt: QAction doesn't appear in menu if the constructor string starts with the substring "about"

1 Answers1