Emacs 24 shows drop-down menu

Question

I use emacs in terminal mode. I know how to get the menu through F10 key. Emacs used to show the menu in terminal mode as text in a separate buffer. Either since a recent update, or I installed some package, I notice emacs starts to create a graphic drop-down list for menu items (see the screenshot). However, I only see it on one of my computer (Mac OS), my other computers still show the menu in "text mode". Can anyone tell me how to enable the graphic dropdown list menu feature? Is this a new feature of latest Emacs 24.3 or it can be enabled via some package?

Dispraise

I think it may be new in Emacs 24.4 (currently in pretest) rather than 23.3, which may be why you are not seeing it on all installations. – Ballyhoo

Yeah, strange. I've visited NEWS page after the reply below. I found this feature is indeed described as Emacs 24.4 changes. However, the version string returned by emacs --version is still showing 24.3.50. But it looks like when all my machines update to 24.4 I will have this feature. Thank you. – Dispraise

Right, I've just tested out. I fetched emacs 24.4.50.1 from git repository, and it has got the new drop-down style menu. So I guess I just have to wait until the official update from my linux distro. – Dispraise

24.4.50 is the development version for what will be the next version after 24.4. The 24.4 pretest is 24.3.90, and 24.3.50 was the development version before the pretest started a week and a half ago. – Ballyhoo

Answer 1

This is described in the NEWS file for Emacs 24.4:

* Emacs now supports menus on text-mode terminals.
If the terminal supports a mouse, clicking on the menu bar, or on
sensitive portions of the mode line or header line, will drop down the
menu defined at that position.  Likewise, clicking C-mouse-2 or
C-mouse-2 or C-mouse-3 on the text area will pop up the menus defined
for those locations.

If the text terminal does not support a mouse, you can activate the
first menu-bar menu by typing F10, which invokes `menu-bar-open'.

If you want the previous behavior, whereby F10 invoked `tmm-menubar',
customize the option `tty-menu-open-use-tmm' to a non-nil value.
(Typing M-` always invokes `tmm-menubar', even if `tty-menu-open-use-tmm'
is nil.)

Looks like a nice feature.

Hepza

Thank you, and I have definitely bookmarked the NEWS file link. It's very useful. – Dispraise

@Dispraise I also recommend this annotated version of the NEWS file, and indeed that blog in general – Hepza