Contextual menu problem with tortoise CVS v1.9.x

I was using the stable branch before 1.8) and most things were working fine.
Then I tried to install 1.9.15 (latest in the "unstable" branch) and all of the sudden I don't see any icons / menu entries anymore for the CVS contextual menu!

Thinking it was a dll issue, I rebooted, uninstalled, made sure DO wasn't running, reinstalled, rebooted ... same thing: most of the CVS menu items are 2 or 3 pixels high, the submenu displays only some of the text (normal item heights in that case), other with 2 or 3 pixels height.
And no icons at all.

And of course, I checked in explorer, the menus look good there. So I'm wondering what the problem is.
For now I reverted back to the 1.8 branch and it works again.

Heh, the Tortoise developers seem to like owner-drawing their context menus in weird and wonderful ways. I guess they've changed the way they're done again. :frowning:

(Not saying Tortoise is doing anything wrong as I know nothing about the details but it does seem to push the envelope in terms of how context menus can be created/drawn which can confuse Opus.)

Tortoise lets you choose from a few different icon sets. Maybe they've changed the default icons to ones that are a difference size or something? Might be worth trying a different set of icons to see if that fixes compatibility with Opus.

Just noticed another problem with another application;

I use daemon tools to mount isos, and the extension called awxDTools to have a right-click option of mounting an iso directly (very handy).

Somehow, it stopped working a while ago. Now the right click menu on an iso has a awxDTools menu item at the top (although not grayed out like in the explorer) and it's missing the whole Daemon-tools submenu.

So I believe there is some kind of bug the way DOpus handles contextual menu. From what I can tell, it has to somehow scan the default contextual menu from explorer, and use it as a base to recreate its own, right?

Anyway, that's annoying.

I use an older version of awxDTools and it's fine for me, except the icons get cut slightly.

Not sure it's really a bug, more an incompatibility. awxDTools and Tortoise both render owner-draw menus, rather than simply provide items and icons for Explorer/Opus to render themselves. It's unusual for programs to do this and I'm not sure what the advantage of doing it is in either of these examples, but it's difficult for Opus to cater for every possibility, especially when they seem to be moving targets, changing things every few months.

I wonder if it's worth asking the Tortoise and awx people if they'd consider a "compatibility" mode where they do their menus in a more normal way (i.e. not doing owner-draw, with whatever downsides that may have)?

(Like Opus has a switch which turns off all custom titlebar rendering for compatibility with Window Blinds and similar programs.)

Seems silly that Opus has to keep changing for these two programs when they might be able to do something simple on their side that makes everyone happy for good.

How willing they are to do this is unknown, though. They may only care about working with Explorer.

Well in tortoise's case, I agree it's a custom draw issue given the entry IS there, yet it's really small and has no text nor icons displayed. The entries are still functional, and you can get a tooltip showing the description when you let your mouse cursor on the empty line.

For awxDTools, the submenu entry isn't there at all.

After giving it some thoughts, I believe it started to happen after I added some custom folders (smart favorites, recent locations, etc) to the default menu for files & folders using this method.

Of course removing those folders do not change the problem. I might try to reinstall DO.

Are you right-clicking on the same .iso (or whatever) files as before? I seem to remember awx not appearing for some of the CD image file extensions while it does appear for others. Not sure though, it was a long time ago.

Try holding shift when right-clicking as well, in case the item is being hidden by windows or by the option in Opus which hides 3rd party items.

Yes, I'm using the same ISO for testing.
I have explorer running alongside with DO. It shows in explorer, not in DO.
Shift-rightclick doesn't change the problem either.

Bingo!
I exported my settings, uninstalled DO, reinstalled it, imported back my settings, and now the submenu works.

So there is definitely something shady in the menu handling in DO. I won't try to modify the default context menu anymore!

One weird thing: in explorer, the DT submenu shows right after the awxDTools disabled entry (second from the top).
In DO, it shows below CVS & winrar.

In TotalCommander, I see the awxDTools entry properly disabled, the daemon tools entry right after that (like in explorer), and view lister is added after those 2 entries. So there is a way to add custom entries without breaking things :wink:

AFAIK context menu order is always pretty random in all programs, although Opus provides a system that allows you to organise things, with a bit of effort:

[Tip: Organise and Speed-Up Context Menus)

I didn't realise/remember before but you can fix the split icons (as in my screenshot above) by turning off Preferences / Toolbars / Appearance: Office 2003-style highlighting.

Of course, this will also make your toolbars and menus look different but, if the icons really bug you, it's a workaround for now.