Question

Anybody knows how to merge two menus with the same name in a MDI application.

More exactly, in the MDI main form I have a menu called ‘File’ which has a sub-menu called ‘Load project’.
In the MDI child form, I have a menu called also ‘File’ which contains a sub-menu called ‘Save project’.

How can I force my application to show both ‘Load’ and ‘Save’ sub-menus under the ‘File’ menu?

–

PS: setting the same GoupIndex value will not work.

Answer 1

To merge your menus use this procedure:

procedure MergeMenus(var SrcMenu, DstMenu: TMainMenu);
var
  i, i2, i3: Integer;
  Menu: TMenuItem;
begin
  for i := 0 to SrcMenu.Items.Count - 1 do
  begin
    for i2 := 0 to DstMenu.Items.Count - 1 do
    begin
      if (SrcMenu.Items[i].Name = DstMenu.Items[i2].Name) and
        (SrcMenu.Items[i].Count > 0) and (DstMenu.Items[i].Count > 0) then
      begin
        for i3 := 0 to SrcMenu.Items[i].Count - 1 do
        begin
          Menu := TMenuItem.Create(DstMenu.Owner);
          // copy another properties if necessery
          Menu.Name := SrcMenu.Items[i].Items[i3].Name;
          Menu.Caption := SrcMenu.Items[i].Items[i3].Caption;
          Menu.ShortCut := SrcMenu.Items[i].Items[i3].ShortCut;
          Menu.OnClick := SrcMenu.Items[i].Items[i3].OnClick;
          DstMenu.Items[i].Add(Menu);
        end;
      end;
    end;
  end;
end;

Call it in the OnCreate event of your MDIChildForm like this:

procedure TMDIChild.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
begin
  MergeMenus(YourMainForm.MainMenu1, Self.MainMenu1);
end;

It will work if two different MainMenus will have MenuItems with the same name. Also please note that there is a possible memory leek if your DstMenu does not have an owner (but I guess it have and it is your MDICHildForm).