I'm writing a document based application in wxPython, by which I mean that the user can have open multiple documents at once in multiple windows or tabs. There are multiple kinds of documents, and the documents can all be in different "states", meaning that there should be different menu options available in the main menu.
I know how to disable and enable menu items using the wx.EVT_UPDATE_UI event, but I can't figure out how to pull off a main menu that changes structure and content drastically based on which document that currently has focus. One of my main issues is that the main menu is created in the top level window, and it has to invoke methods in grand children and great grand children that haven't even been created yet.

Contrived example; when a document of type "JPEG" is open, the main menu should look like:
File      Edit      Compression     Help
And when the user switches focus (CTRL+Tab) to a document of type "PDF", the main menu should change to:
File      Edit      PDF     Publish     Help
And the "Edit" menu should contain some different options from when the "JPEG" document was in focus.

Current I'm just creating the menu in a function called create_main_menu in the top level window, and the document panels have no control over it. What would be necessary to pull off the kind of main menu scheme I describe above, specifically in wxPython?
Probably the only way to do it with the standard wx.Menu is to destroy and recreate the entire menubar. You might be able to Hide it though. Either way, I think it would be easiest to just put together a set of methods that creates each menubar on demand. Then you can destroy one and create the other.
You might also take a look at FlatMenu since it is pure Python and easier to hack.
How do I manage a dynamic, changing main menu in wxPython?