Suggest returning data for menus (and categories, indicators, etc.) instead of html to allow the most flexibility in templating.

Specifically, html-items is currently returned:

{
    "data-logos": {
        ...
    },
    ...
    "data-portlets": {
        ...
        "data-personal": {
            "id": "p-personal",
            "class": "mw-portlet mw-portlet-personal",
            "html-tooltip": "",
            "html-items": "<... List of menu links already formatted in html ...>",
            "html-after-portal": "",
            "label": "Personal tools"
        },
        ...
    }
    ...
}

However, an array of html attributes (array-links) should be returned:

{
    "data-logos": {
        ...
    },
    ...
    "data-portlets": {
        ...
        "data-personal": {
            "id": "p-personal",
            "class": "mw-portlet mw-portlet-personal",
            "html-tooltip": "",
            "html-after-portal": "",
            "label": "Personal tools",
            "array-links": [
                {
                    "userpage": {
                        "single-id": "pt-userpage",
                        "href": "\/w\/User:Username",
                        "class": false,
                        "text": "User Name",
                        "dir": "auto",
                        "exists": true
                    }
                },
                ...,
                ...,
                ...,
                ...,
                ...
            ]
        },
        ...
    }
    ...
}

This would allow skin developers the most flexibility for css and styling with the Mustache template. This approach should also be expanded to html-tooltip and html-after-portal as well as any other html returned from SkinMustache::getTemplateData.

Thanks for sharing @Lorenmaxwell

In T272624#7413805, @Lorenmaxwell wrote:

Suggest returning data for menus (and categories, indicators, etc.) instead of html to allow the most flexibility in templating.
[...]
This would allow skin developers the most flexibility for css and styling with the Mustache template. This approach should also be expanded to html-tooltip and html-after-portal as well as any other html returned from SkinMustache::getTemplateData.

I agree with this; this would make generating menus much easier.

Would it be possible to add some kind of short description associated with the menu item?
It will be useful for providing additional context as secondary text or tooltip.

Secondary text	Tooltip

^ (Sorry for potato screenshot, I can't screenshot title tooltip properly)

Additionally, certain core menu items have keyboard shortcut associated with them
Should this project allow adding. removing, or editing keyboard shortcuts?

Hey all! Just a heads up we'll working on T311647 over the next 3 quarters, which documents our goals for completion of this work. We're hoping to see a lot of improvements in menu support - particularly around making sure keyboard shortcuts just work and moving away from blobs of HTML (all backwards compatible of course!)

IF anyone is interested in helping contribute code, please subscribe to the phabricator task and feel free to poke any subtasks there with offers of help :-).