The trigger pane gains the display the user asked for and the library now provides, and the
persistence it already had is renamed to what it is.
**Persistence is one image; the last-N-traces display is "multiple events".** Both live in a new
`Advanced` expander in the trigger panel, together with the settings that are set up once and left
alone. `persistence` (a switch) turns on the plotter's `Plot::set_density()` for every row:
every triggered acquisition is accumulated into a screen-sized intensity grid drawn behind the
traces, brightness being how many acquisitions covered a cell -- no depth to choose, no memory
that grows with the acquisitions (2.2 MB over four 573x412 rows in the probe's run). `fades by`
picks the fade the user asked for: **acquisitions** (each keeps a factor of what was before it,
0.5 by default -- the phosphor afterglow) or **time** (a time constant in stream seconds, so the
display fades while you watch whatever the trigger rate).
- **Trigger mode only, as asked.** `apply_density()` (the tick) states the display on for `Held`
and `Capturing` and off for `Live`, `Waiting`, `Paused` and a file, and turning it off drops the
grid at once rather than at an acquisition a quiet trigger never sends. It is unpickable and
reserves no layout space, exactly as the invalid-span bands are: a density can never be in the
way of a cursor or a drop, and it cannot move the framing.
- **One deposit per acquisition, one frame after the frame that frames it.** `Plot::accumulate_density()`
deposits what the plot holds through the transforms of its *last* layout -- the frame's own is
computed inside the paint that follows the tick -- so `density_pending` is set beside
`record_pending` and consumed by the next tick. In the same tick it was right on a Held-to-Held
transition and wrong on the first latch, whose axis was still the live ring's. Switching the
display on under an acquisition already on screen deposits it too, so the switch does not appear
to do nothing until the next latch (`single` mode may never send one).
- **The session carries it**: `trigger_density`, `trigger_density_decay` ("acquisitions"/"time",
the words the panel shows), `trigger_density_tau` and `trigger_density_factor`, written whether
or not it is on -- and `trigger_persistence` still means the multiple-event depth, so an older
file is unchanged.
- **The library changed twice under this**: the deposit now counts a cell **once per trace per
sweep** (counting the hits put one dense sweep at the ceiling of the brightness scale and hid the
sweeps behind it -- the probe's `on` leg read `peak=18` for a single sweep and reads `peak=1`
now), and a frame's upload is every row's rather than the last row's. Both are in the plotter's
own commit.
`UDPSCOPE_PROBE_DENSITY_MS` reads it all back off the plots -- the plotter's own `ink()`/`peak()` --
with the panel's own widgets driving the switch and the fade, in four legs: **off** (`rows=0
ink=0.0 peak=0.0000`), **on** (`rows=4`, `peak=1.0000`), **step-acquisitions** (`peak=1.0000 ->
1.5000`, the factor then the new sweep) and **step-time** (`ratio=0.367879`, `1/e` for `dt = tau`).
It also reads the frame cost as an A/B **inside one run** (the accumulators at the switch against
the frames after it): `tick 0.74 -> 9.99 ms`, `draw 2.09 -> 20.91 ms` at four rows and 2.2 M cells
on llvmpipe.
Acceptance: clean build 0 errors and exactly the three documented warnings (12352-byte GResource
blob, two `MathNode::source`), `test-ui` 13/13, `test-help` green, a plain run with **0
Gtk-CRITICAL / Gtk-WARNING** and `gtk warnings: 0`, and the panel's own frame reading
`boxes=16 controls_inside=15/15 advanced_widgets=5/5 advanced_inside=5/5` (the block's controls
counted from the expander's child, which is not in the widget-parent chain -- and the search
block's walk now names *its* expander instead of "the first one", which the second expander would
have stolen).
Docs: the trigger/pinning invariants carry the rule and its five consequences, `probe-readings.md`
the four legs and the dump line, `verification.md` the probe's sequence and assertions, and the
manual's trigger page explains both displays to a user.
Two changes in the trigger pane, landed together.
**Persistence.** Trigger mode keeps the last N published acquisitions and draws them fading toward
the background, N being a panel control (1..8, default 1) with N=1 meaning today's behaviour
exactly, so the knob is the switch. The layers are the accumulate path's own -- one layer per
(signal, age) in the row's free trace slots, named with the accumulate vocabulary so
`layer_base_name()` strips the suffix and `signal_color()` resolves the base signal -- so a layer is
not a signal: the signal list, the colours and the measurements see one row per signal.
`ScopeModel` retains the outgoing snapshot in seven atomic `shared_ptr` slots (no lock, no copy; the
snapshot already exists) and a layer's channel is resolved **by name inside the snapshot**, because
the channel list is renumbered by any structural change since that acquisition was cut.
`RowSet::sync_layers()` re-plans from the rows and the depth alone, so a latch costs no rebuild, and
`event_data_window()` skips layer slots so an older acquisition can never re-pin the axis. The
schedule is 0.5^age -- the acquisition on screen at full brightness and each older one half the
previous, independent of N, so raising the depth adds dimmer acquisitions rather than rescaling the
ones already on screen. Memory is bounded by the ring's own `--buffer-mb` rather than by the depth,
which is the bound that cannot be driven into an OOM, and the panel says when either bound bites.
This also wired up `set_trace_alpha()`, which the accumulate path was setting and nothing was
reading -- so the documented 0.35 translucency of an accumulation was opaque in fact.
**Force.** In the trigger pane beside Arm/Disarm, shown only while trigger mode is on: one
acquisition now, with the configured window. It is a synthetic edge rather than a second publisher
-- the engine opens one capture at the present moment and everything else is the ordinary latch, so
a forced acquisition is cut, pinned, framed, recorded and cached exactly like a latched one, and
the button owns no window and no publish. The pre-trigger gate is deliberately skipped (capture now
is a request for the history that exists, and the snapshot reports its own shorter pre_s), a
capture already filling is refused rather than restarted, and the state afterwards is the mode's:
Normal stays armed, Single disarms. The request is one atomic flag written under the model mutex
with `armed` -- the producer reads `armed` at the top of a packet and the request at the bottom, so
a request written between the two would be dropped -- and consumed at the end of a packet, after
the channel loop and before the pending publish.
**A defect fixed in passing, in the function Force was modelled on:** `on_arm_clicked()` passed
`TriggerConfig::channel` (an index into `channels()`) to `set_signal_enabled()` (an index into
`signals()`). With one signal acquired, arming switched on the stream's clock signal and left the
watched signal untouched -- and since a signal the panel was not showing is a change, it rebuilt
the buffer under the click, dropping the very pre-trigger window the arming, and now the Force, was
about to capture. Measured before: `0.0100 s of history behind it`; after: `2.5299 s`.
`trigger_signal_index()` is now the one resolution, used by both buttons.
Two panes, two modes. **Locked** is what a returning user gets: the trigger pane shows one line saying
what it is set to, the signal list shows only the signals that are on, and neither offers a control that
changes the configuration — each heading has an `[edit]` button (the Adwaita `emblem-system-symbolic`,
swapping to `emblem-ok-symbolic` in configuration mode) that flips its pane. A **first run** — no session
file for that source — never reaches `apply_layout()` and comes up in configuration mode, because
configuring the host is what a first run is for. The mode is a mode and not a setting, so it is
deliberately not persisted.
The locked signal list drops the rows of every signal that is off, which is the whole of "show active
signals": the list already filters on nothing, so the lock is one `continue`. With the rows go the acquire
tick, the overflow menu (Information, Calibrate…, Delete, rename) and the `MATH` divider's `+` — and the
colour chip stops being clickable, because choosing a colour is configuration too. Dragging a signal onto
a plot stays: that is which view shows what, not what the scope is set up to do.
**The trigger is persisted, settings and state both** — the settings *even while it is off*, which is the
point: a trigger configured once and switched off is still the trigger you come back to. `LayoutState`
gains fifteen flat `trigger_*` keys; the channel is stored by *name* (every rebuild renumbers the
channels, the model's own rule) and the two enumerations as **the words the panel's dropdowns show**,
because an index ties the file to a declaration order — the lesson `math_op_at()` already carries. The
words are shared with the panel now (`trigger_type_text()` and friends build the dropdown arrays), so the
two cannot drift.
Two ordering traps, both found by running it:
- **The channel name resolves twice over.** `rebuild_trigger_signals()` picks up
`App::pending_trigger_channel` when the stream arrives *after* the load, and `apply_trigger_layout()`
resolves it itself when the channels are already there — without the second path the name stayed
pending past the one rebuild that would have used it, and the trigger silently sat on channel 0
(`summary='pulse width · sine …'` where the session said `square`).
- **The trigger's state is applied by pressing the control, not by setting a flag**: the toggle is set
*outside* the `updating_panels` window `apply_layout()` uses, because a toggle set inside it emits
`toggled` into a handler that returns at once and nothing would happen — no arming, no events button,
no sensitivity.
Verified, in both modes and both directions:
panes: trigger=locked signals=locked body_visible=0 summary='window · square · 0.3…0.6 · 20 % pre'
panes: trigger=config signals=config body_visible=1 summary=''
signals panel: labels=2 list=1 rows=7 signals=2 math=4 divider=1
The locked trigger pane is 42 px tall against 580 unlocked. A hand-written session round-trips: every
value it named came back in the panel's own controls, `trigger=1/1` (the state arrived and the pane's
switch followed it), and the file the app wrote back carried all fifteen keys with the untouched ones at
their defaults. `[side-tab-probe] … advanced=4` on its documented recipe; `make test-ui` 14 files; zero
`Gtk-CRITICAL` and no missing icon.
Docs: the `panes:` reading with what each field means, the corrected `labels=` note (the panel's frame is
counted above the list now, because the heading sits in a heading row), the invariants for both the
persistence and the lock, the README's deviation note, and the removal of its claim that the trigger has
never been persisted — it is now, and the locked view is built from exactly that.
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.
Martino Ferrari