A Mallard set under $XDG_DATA_HOME/help is one Yelp cannot draw the figures
of: its sandbox exposes the system help directories but not the user's data
directory, and each figure is a separate file the page references. The pages
open without their images, and through the app's help: URI the viewer spins
for ever because the failed image fetch means the page's load event never
fires -- which reads as a navigation failure, not a missing resource.
The alert and the manual both recommended install-help-user as the no-root
route, so they led users into exactly that case. Name the system-wide install
first and state the user-local caveat where the advice is given, and record
the finding in the GTK traps invariant so the next figure that will not draw
is not chased as a markup or a file problem.
The failure alert told people to run `cmake --install build --prefix ~/.local`;
that still works, but `cmake --build build --target install-help-user` is the
form that needs no prefix guessing and prints the path it wrote, so the alert
names it and stays its former length. The manual gains a short "Installing
this manual" section on the overview page naming both targets -- the no-root
user one and the prefix-driven one for a system-wide or packaged install,
which the caller wraps in sudo -- and README and the GTK invariants doc follow
the alert's new command.
The contextual help was on by default, so a first run met a window with a "?"
beside every surface it had not asked to have explained; `contextual_help` now
defaults to false and the layer is asked for from the Help menu, from the
chooser's new help menu, or with Ctrl+H.
The source chooser runs before `App` exists, which makes it the window a user
who does not know how to start is looking at, so it now carries the same three
help affordances the window's Help view does: Documentation (the manual is
another process and needs nothing of the app), Enable contextual help (a row
whose check *is* the setting, written to the file the app reads a moment
later), and Guided tour. The tour is drawn on the app's own window, so the
chooser can only record the wish: it sets `Config::tour_pending` -- the value
`main()` owns and hands to both `choose_source()` and `run_ui()` -- and
`on_activate()` starts it once the window is up and laid out, through its own
callback so the readings can tell a request from the first-run auto-start.
The rows are the window's own `menu_button()`/`menu_toggle()`; `install_css()`
therefore runs from `choose_source()` (it is idempotent now) so the popover
gets the `.udpscope-menu` rules before it is shown.
Opening the manual could also fail with a message that blamed the handler
whatever was missing. `help_installed_path()` now resolves `help:<id>` the way
the specification does and the failure alert says which of the two it is: with
the set installed it names the viewer, without it it names the identifier, the
expected installed path and the install command. `show_help()` gained an
optional reporter, which `UDPSCOPE_PROBE_HELP_MS` uses for a new reading --
`[help] launch attempted= done= ok= error='' installed=` -- since a successful
launch leaves no window of ours to observe.
Tested: clean --clean-first build, three warnings as documented; test-ui 13/13
and test-help pass; no Gtk-CRITICAL in the help, helpui and chooser runs.
The help was 14 Pango-markup `.txt` bodies in a second GResource, drawn into a paged `GtkWindow`
built in `help_window.cpp`. That made F1 a viewer of ours with no search index, no cross-references
and no translation, and it kept the manual in the *binary* when every other desktop application's is
a document on disk. It is now a real Mallard set:
help/C/org.udpscope.app/ index.page + 14 topic pages + figures/*.png
and `show_help()` hands `help:org.udpscope.app` to whatever the desktop registered for the `help:`
scheme -- Yelp on GNOME -- through a `GtkUriLauncher`, reporting a launch failure with a
`GtkAlertDialog` rather than a click that silently does nothing. The paged window's builder, the
page table and `help_self_check()`'s markup validation are gone with the resource.
The document identifier is the desktop file's own basename (its desktop-file id), derived in
CMakeLists from `data/org.udpscope.app.desktop.in`, so the same string is the `.desktop` name, the
GApplication id and the install directory at once. The set is installed by a new `install()` rule to
`<datadir>/help/C/org.udpscope.app/` -- where the freedesktop Help System Specification's `help:`
URI resolves `help:<id>` -- so the manual is read from a datadir by another process even though the
binary has no install step. `UDPSCOPE_HELP_NAME` and `UDPSCOPE_HELP_DIR` are compiled in from that
one place.
The 14 pages were migrated fact for fact, but restructured the Mallard way: a `<desc>` per page
(what a search result shows), `<steps>` for procedures, `<terms>` for option lists,
`<gui>`/`<key>`/`<keyseq>` for interface words and keys, `<note>` for the asides, and a topic graph
via `<link type="guide" xref="index#main"/>`. The figures are annotated screenshots produced by
`tools/make-help-shots.sh`, which drives the app headlessly against `tools/mock_udpstreamer.py` and
draws the boxes with ImageMagick; the side panel's box is measured from the app's own `side=NNNx`
dump reading, the header and status bands come from a documented table, and a crop whose standard
deviation is 0 fails the script.
`cmake --build build --target test-help` checks the set the way `test-ui` checks the `.ui` files:
`yelp-check`'s offline subcommands (links, media, orphans, ids) and a `yelp-build html` render.
`yelp-check validate` is deliberately absent -- it fetches the Mallard RelaxNG schema over the
network and fails offline for that reason, not for a fault in the pages.
The `[help]` probe reading changes with the resource it was written for. `parsed == pages` over
in-binary markup cannot exist now, so `help_self_check()` scans `UDPSCOPE_HELP_DIR` and the line
reads `topics=14 index=1 figures=3`; `topics=0 index=0` is the manual missing from the tree, which
is the finding the old count named.
Verified: clean build with the documented three warnings (the help bundle's `-Woverlength-strings`
is gone, so the baseline moves from four to three); test-ui 14/14; test-help clean (the four
subcommands and 15 pages rendered); a temp-prefix install lands 15 `.page` files and 3 figures at
`share/help/C/org.udpscope.app/`; the headless run reads `[help] topics=14 index=1 figures=3 dir=...`
with 0 Gtk-CRITICAL. Yelp's own window could not be exercised on this box -- it starts under Xvfb,
activates its portals and never maps, the same WebKit/portal limitation that stops a grab -- so its
rendering and its search index are unverified here; the content pipeline was (`yelp-build` renders
the whole set).
Docs: the manual's build/install/open story in `build-and-run.md` and README; the warning baseline
in `verification.md`/CLAUDE.md; the help bullets in `invariants-gtk-and-chrome.md`; the `[help]`
line in `probe-readings.md`.
src/ui/source-form.ui is the form a source is added or edited with: an AdwDialog of
AdwPreferencesGroup rows (AdwEntryRow, AdwSpinRow, AdwSwitchRow) with its action in the header bar,
where the label says which mode the form is in -- Connect for a new host, Save for an existing
configuration. The grid of labels and bare entries it replaces had its hints in placeholders, which
vanish as soon as there is a value; they are the groups' descriptions now.
src/ui/help.ui is the help window's chrome: an AdwWindow with a header bar and an
AdwNavigationSplitView whose sidebar is the page list. The rows stay in C++ because the fourteen
pages are data, not template.
Four UI files now, 653 lines of template that used to be widget construction. Two libadwaita traps
cost a run each and are in docs/claude/invariants-gtk-and-chrome.md: an AdwDialog has no content
property (its child is a plain <child>, unlike an AdwToolbarView), and AdwEntryRow has no subtitle
(it is an AdwPreferencesRow, not an AdwActionRow). The unused form_field() helper went with them.
Every probe reading is unchanged -- [sources] form:, [sources] edit form:, [help] -- which is what
refactoring a shape rather than a behaviour should look like.
GTK4 and libadwaita. It receives one UDP stream through the vendored
udpsclient, buffers it in a large ring, and draws it with the vendored
plotter: a trigger with a pre/post event window, a pause that freezes the
window, cursors, measurements, math channels in a node editor, an event cache,
named configurations, preferences, and an export of the visible window to
.npy/.csv. Waveform files can be opened and analysed in place.
The interface is two threads -- a producer that owns the socket and the GTK
main thread that owns every widget and the GL context -- sharing one model
under one mutex, with samples crossing through lock-free rings.
deps/plotter is a submodule pinned to the commit this tree builds against;
deps/udpsclient is vendored in place. docs/claude/ documents the rules that
cost a defect to learn, and SPECS.md is the requirement document.
AdwAboutDialog puts the application icon in its own header, which is what the
app now has one for, and adw_about_window_new() is deprecated in favour of it.
It is an AdwDialog and not a GtkWindow, so it clears on ::closed and closes with
adw_dialog_close() -- the same trap the shortcut overview documents, and both
dialogs now share one handler keyed by the pointer to clear.
Two gains while mapping the fields: system_information becomes debug_info, which
renders as a Troubleshooting page with a copy button, and the string behind it
becomes a std::string rather than a char[1024] that truncated a long settings
path in silence.
The probe now reads the icon name back out of the open dialog, so it is asserted
to carry the icon rather than merely to open.
The hand-rolled grid existed to avoid GTK's deprecated GtkShortcutsWindow;
libadwaita 1.8's AdwShortcutsDialog is the supported replacement, so use the
platform widget and get its search, sectioning and shortcut labels for free.
The table strings become GTK accelerator syntax, since the shortcut label parses
them. The six mouse rows cannot: no accelerator syntax names a wheel or a drag,
so they carry an empty accelerator and prose in the new subtitle field.
adw_init() is called in run_ui() and in choose_source() (replacing its
gtk_init()), which means the whole app is drawn with libadwaita's stylesheet.
Verified settled: viewport.w 870..870, axes.w changes 2, x-desync 0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The pages are Pango markup in a GResource, bundled for the same reason the icons
are: udpscope runs straight out of the build tree with no install step, so a
runtime search path's failure mode would be a silently empty help window.
--c-name=udpscope_help keeps the two generated bundles from colliding.
Every page is validated with pango_parse_markup() at load and falls back to a
one-line stand-in rather than rendering raw markup or nothing. show_help() reuses
help_window.cpp's existing close-request handler, and closes via
gtk_window_close() so that handler runs and the pointer is nulled.
UDPSCOPE_PROBE_HELP_MS loads and validates every page, opens the help and About
windows, closes both and reports; parsed must equal pages.
Martino Ferrari