Menu contributions with alt command won't trigger

[eamodio]

• VSCode Version: Version 1.8.0-insider (1.8.0-insider) fb8939b
• OS Version: macOS Sierra 10.12.1 (16B2555)

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Using an extension that provides an alt command to a menu, press alt while clicking the menu
2. The alt command never seems to trigger, just the main command

[jrieken]

This currently only works when menu items appear in the editor title, e.g when we render them. When showing them in the native context menu we cannot get the alt-behaviour to work because opening a menu stops the whole JS event loop

[eamodio]

Instead of providing alt on click of a menu item -- what if the support was holding alt when opening the menu and then the menu would actually show the alternative options?

[eamodio]

@jrieken I've finally gotten around to check this out -- and am loving the new behavior. Although I have noticed that intermittently the alt menu choices "stick" meaning, I open the context menu with alt pressed and the alternates show up correctly, and then I close the menu and without pressing alt, I open the menu again and sometimes the same menu with the alternates is shown.

Also, it would be really awesome if this new behavior was supported across all the context menus, not just the editor one.

[jrieken]

Yeah, thanks for getting back on this. I reverted my changes and reopened this issue. It isn't as easy as I thought... The challenge is that as soon as the context menu opens we are blind and deaf, in particular we miss when the alt-key is being released. Since there is no API as is alt key pressed right now and since we emulate that by listening to various events it's quite bad that we miss those events...

Unsure how to fix this without getting more support from electron.

[eamodio]

@jrieken Nooooo. ;) Damn, that sucks -- was really loving the behavior. This should still be opened though right?

[jrieken]

I know... the new year shouldn't start with such bad news ;-)

[jrieken]

Thanks to @isidorn this now works. We added a big global event that unsets the alt-state before a menu is showing. With that we can now populate any menu with alternative action when clicking alt before opening them.