Simulink Context Menu Architecture

Architecture

These context menus are made up of building blocks called widgets. For example, the push buttons you see in the menu are a type of widget. Some widgets are containers — widgets that contain other widgets. The context menu itself is a container named RichMenu.

The RichMenu widget has three subdivisions:

The subdivisions are not containers, they are locations within the RichMenu widget. At each of these locations, the RichMenu widget contains MenuSection widgets.

The MenuSection widgets are also containers. MenuSection widgets can contain a variety of widgets, including other containers. For example, a MenuSection widget can contain a ButtonRowItem widget that contains PushButton widgets.

In addition to the MenuSection widget collections in the Pre-Focus, Focus, and Post-Focus menus, the RichMenu also contains AppMenu widgets and the FormatBar widget. These widgets are containers as well.

AppMenu widgets are the app sections that open when you pause on Select Apps and select apps. Each AppMenu widget contains options specific to a Simulink app.

The FormatBar widget is the menu that opens and closes when you click the arrow at the top of the context menu. The format bar contains widgets related to clipboard and formatting operations.

Some widgets in the context menu hierarchy have popups. Popups are widgets that appear in response to an interaction. For example, when you right-click the Simulink model canvas and pause your pointer on System Mask, the list of options that appears is a popup. When you right-click a signal line and pause your pointer on the arrow in the button row labeled Log Signal, the option that appears is a popup.

A popup must be a Menu widget, which is a container. While the popup itself is a container, a widget with a popup is not necessarily a container. Having a popup is different from containing other widgets. For example, a DropDownItem widget such as the System Mask option has a popup but is not a container. A ButtonRowItem widget such as the Log Signal row is a container and can have popups.

Available Modifications

You can customize the context menu by extending the RichMenu widget. Extending a container means adding widgets at the extension points of the container.

The extension points of the RichMenu widget are:

By extending the RichMenu widget, you can add MenuSection widgets at these locations and populate them, for example with ButtonRowItem or MenuItem widgets. Extending other containers is not supported. For example, you cannot add buttons to the default button rows of the context menu or menu items to the default menu sections.

This is the hierarchy of context menu widgets that you can add to the context menu, including containers and popups. The hierarchy lists the widgets using their JSON type values. To add a widget to the context menu, work your way down the hierarchy from the container you want to extend, which is the RichMenu container. For example, to add a PushButton widget, add a MenuSection container to the RichMenu container, add a ButtonRowItem container to the MenuSection container, and add a PushButton widget to the ButtonRowItem container.

RichMenu (container)

The table shows examples of the types of widgets in the hierarchy.