How to get an options button on top of NativeActivity

[Andreas Falkenhahn]

I'm migrating an Android 2.3 NativeActivity app to Android 4.0 (API level 14). When targetting API level 9, Android automatically emulates the menu button, which used to be a hardware button, by adding a fourth button next to the three buttons in the bottom button bar. When targetting API level 14, however, this menu button will go away. The official suggestion is that I should just use the action bar instead.

This is, however, easier said than done because my app does all its drawing programmatically and doesn't use any Android widgets. Thus, I don't want to have an action bar on top of my custom drawn app content. All I want to have is a little options button that opens a menu when pressed. The old menu button was perfect for that but this is no longer possible with API level 14 and up.

So I want to ask about ways to substitute Android 2.3's menu button. I want to have a little options button that permanently appears on top of my NativeActivity. How could this be achieved?
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Best regards,
Andreas Falkenhahn mailto:***@falkenhahn.com