Comment 8 for bug 992464

> Can you please elaborate on this? What xsetting set is responsible for
> that? And how should gtk know by itself when global menus work and when
> not if appmenu-gtk doesn't indicate this fact?

see http://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/3.4/GtkApplicationWindow.html

"The settings "gtk-shell-shows-app-menu" and "gtk-shell-shows-menubar" tell GTK+ whether the desktop environment is showing the application menu and menubar models outside the application as part of the desktop shell. For instance, on OS X, both menus will be displayed remotely; on Windows neither will be. gnome-shell (starting with version 3.4) will display the application menu, but not the menubar. "

gtk doesn't "know by itself", gnome-settings-daemon set those properties according to the desktop environment (i.e check if you are under gnome-shell, unity, or something else by checking what dbus services are in use), one issue though is that the xsettings is for the session and will not make a difference between ssh exported and local apps ... or menu export doesn't work over ssh because they don't use the same session bus, that's a known issue, not easy to workaround though (upstream gtk wanted to avoid any roundtrip, slow or blocking check because those would lead to visual issues and menus being hidden or displayed after a delay)