Vim Recipes ‣ GUI (GVim) ‣ Creating Menus and Toolbar Buttons
You want to add your own commands to Gvim's menus, or toolbar, for quick access.
For example, you've written a function that automatically writes bestselling novels for you, but you're not willing to use it if you have to type its name every time; you want to invoke it by selecting a menu option.
Use :set amenu menu command to map a menu item to a command. This is the GUI equivalent of :map.
For example, :amenu Help.Op&ions :help options<cr> adds a new item called Options to the Help menu, which invokes :help options. The ampersand (&) signifies that the character it prefixes can be used as a keyboard shortcut, so in this case <Alt>+h+t selects this command.
You're not restricted to adding items to existing menus; you can create a new top-level menu simply by specifying a name not currently in use. For example:
:amenu <silent>&Vim.vim\.org :!xdg-open http://www.vim.org/<cr>will create a new top-level menu called Vim with the shortcut key V. It will contain one entry named vim.org (we escape the . because otherwise it would create a vim entry which in turn contain an org item). When invoked it will open the Vim website on systems adhering to the Free Desktop Specification. The <silent> prefix prevents the command from being echoed on the command-line.
If you want to add a dashed separator line between menu items use a menu item named -SEP- and an empty command, e.g. :amenu Help.-SEP- :.
To control where a top-level menu appears relative to its neighbours you need to prefix amenu with a numeric priority: the lower the number the further right the menu's position. For example, :5amenu First.first :echo 'first'<cr> creates a top-level menu named First that appears before all of the others.
The same approach can be used to position menu items. For example, :amenu 9999.1 Help.first :echo 'first'<cr> adds a first item to the Help menu, which appears before the other items.
You can also use :amenu to add a new toolbar icon:
:amenu icon=image-path Toolbar.item-name
commandFor example:
:amenu icon=options.png ToolBar.OptionsHelp :help<cr>If the image-path consists only of a filename, as above, Vim prepends $VIMRUNTIME/bitmaps/ to it.