GTK4 defaults to Vulkan, and an X11-forwarded display has no device to make a
swapchain from; the plot is a GtkGLArea, so it then asks for a GL context that
is not there either. --renderer cairo is the software preset for that display:
it exports GSK_RENDERER=cairo and LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 in main() before
gtk_init()/adw_init(), because both are read when the renderer and the context
are created. --renderer gl is the faster choice when indirect GL works, and
--renderer vulkan makes the default explicit. Nothing is exported, and GTK's
own choice stands, when the option is absent.
The once-a-second header line is now behind UDPSCOPE_PROBE_HEADER, following
the [notrace] rule: its widths are still sampled for the exit dump, but the
line is detail behind that reading rather than output every run prints.
UDPSCOPE_PROBE_RENDERER prints the exported pair before GTK starts and the
GskRenderer GTK actually built.
README, the manual's overview and docs/claude record the two symptoms and the
cure.
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.
Three pages opened in nothing in Yelp -- overview (twice), math, trigger -- while every check
passed. They are exactly the pages whose <figure> had a sentence for a <title> and no <desc>:
a Mallard <figure> is title?, desc?, media, and the page is refused without the description. The
idiomatic shape, as the shipped sets on this machine write it, moves the sentence into <desc> and
leaves the <title> a name. Note trigger-capture.png is referenced from both overview and trigger,
which is why those two pages are the ones that were noticed.
The gap was in the check, not in its reach: tools/check_help.sh ran links/media/orphans/ids and an
HTML render, and all four are silent about a page that is well linked, well parsed and
unrenderable. `yelp-check validate` is the one that would have caught it, and it cannot run here:
it generates the RelaxNG schema with xsltproc, but the schema includes the base grammar over the
network and this machine's libxml cannot fetch. So the structural rules this project has actually
needed are checked with xmllint's XPath, offline, each written after a page needed it.
One trap, paid for while writing it: a Mallard page declares
xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/", XPath 1.0 has no default namespace, so `//figure` matches
nothing and every rule passes -- the first version of this check reported "ok" for the very defect
it was written for. Every expression uses local-name() for that reason, and the script says so
where the next reader will be.
Verified: on the committed pages the rules exit 1 and name the three figures, which is the
failing-before case kept as the regression test; on the fixed pages all five rules pass and
yelp-build renders all 15; make -C build test-help goes from red to green.
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`.
