android - openOptionsMenu function not working in ICS?

Question

Im using action bar compability library. Im trying to open the options menu from a button with openOptionsMenu() function but it does nothing.

Menu shows as usual when pressing the menu key on my phone. What is wrong here?

public class ReadActivity extends ActionBarActivity {

    ...

    @Override
    public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
        boolean value;
        MenuInflater menuInflater = getMenuInflater();
        menuInflater.inflate(R.menu.read, menu);
        value = super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu);

        if (Helper.SupportsNewApi()) {
            getActionBar().hide();
        } else {
            ((View) ((LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.actionbar_compat))
                    .getParent()).setVisibility(View.GONE);
        }

        return value;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        switch (item.getItemId()) {
        case android.R.id.home:
            finish();
            break;
        case R.id.menu_search:
            // Toast.makeText(this, "Tapped search", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
            break;
        case R.id.menu_bookmark:
            // selectText();
            // setFullScreen(false);
            break;
        case R.id.menu_day_night_mode:
            break;
        case R.id.menu_settings:
            break;
        case R.id.menu_zoom_in:
            showOverlay(false);
            break;
        case R.id.menu_zoom_out:
            showOverlay(false);
            break;
        case R.id.menu_table_of_contents:
            Intent tocIntent = new Intent(this, TocActivity.class);
            int GET_SECTION_REFERENCE = 1;
            startActivityForResult(tocIntent, GET_SECTION_REFERENCE);
            break;
        case R.id.menu_overflow:
            Toast.makeText(this, "Tapped overflow", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();

            //closeOptionsMenu();
            openOptionsMenu(); //tried the below aswell, no results
            //getWindow().openPanel(Window.FEATURE_OPTIONS_PANEL, null);
            break;
        }
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }


    @Override //disable volume buttons
    public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {
        if (!menuShown && (keyCode == 25 || keyCode == 24)) {
            return true;
        }
        return super.onKeyDown(keyCode, event);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean onKeyUp(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {
        Log.d(tag, "Keycode is = "+keyCode);
        if (keyCode == 82) {
            if (!menuShown) {
                //openOptionsMenu();
                showOverlay(true);
            } else {
                showOverlay(false);
            }


                    //don't want it to open when pressing menu
            return true;
        } else if (keyCode == 4 && menuShown) {
            showOverlay(false);
            return true;
        } else if (keyCode == 25 && !menuShown) {
            prevPage();
            return true;
        } else if (keyCode == 24 && !menuShown) {
            nextPage();
            return true;
        }

        return super.onKeyUp(keyCode, event);
    }

}

Answer 1

I was having the same problem trying to go around this openOptionsMenu thing on an app that I was doing that should run on Android 1.6 and up. Following the answer from Werner Van Belle I reached the conclusion that we could achieve a workaround to solve the problem. So I came up with the following code, it's always beatiful when people don't mark a method as final, so we can always override it. It's perfect if you don't want to give up on targeting your app to the latest api (android:targetSdkVersion="17"). I hope you guys like it. :)

@Override
public void openOptionsMenu() {

    Configuration config = getResources().getConfiguration();

    if((config.screenLayout & Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_MASK) 
            > Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_LARGE) {

        int originalScreenLayout = config.screenLayout;
        config.screenLayout = Configuration.SCREENLAYOUT_SIZE_LARGE;
        super.openOptionsMenu();
        config.screenLayout = originalScreenLayout;

    } else {
        super.openOptionsMenu();
    }
}