src/ui/signals-panel.ui holds the panel's shape: the box and its margins, the heading,
the hint that says what a signal is for, and the list. The rows stay in code -- one per
signal, carrying that signal's switch, colour, calibration and drop targets, rebuilt
whenever the stream's signals change -- so the file holds the frame, which is the shape
the plan gives this slice.
The list's width-only size request moved with it, comment and all: a height floor there
made the list occupy 120 px whatever it held, which hid the compact rows' height behind
it.
Read back by a new dump line, `signals panel: labels=2 list=1`, where a lost id reads as
`labels=1` or `list=0` instead of a panel quietly missing its hint; `panels: … row_h=26`
still reads the list's geometry and the height a row takes. check_ui is at 10 ok.
The panel's shape -- the heading, one labelled row per setting, the two buttons that
run it, and the search block -- now lives in src/ui/trigger-panel.ui. Every control
that carries a value stays in code and is appended into the file's row: a dropdown's
model and a spin's range are the application's, a label is text a translator owns, so
that is where the line runs. `row_for()` is `labeled_box()`'s arrangement with the
labels moved into the file; the thirteen old calls to `labeled_box()` here are gone and
its eleven uses elsewhere are untouched.
`sync_trigger_rows()` now guards the rows it shows and hides, because a row that comes
from the file can be missing rather than merely misnamed.
The frame is read back by a new dump line:
trigger panel: boxes=13 controls_inside=13/13 search_widgets=4/4 search_inside=4/4
where `controls_inside` is what a drifted id breaks -- a control built and never placed
leaves the panel with a field missing and nothing else complaining -- and
`[defaults] trigger: 0.001 0.002 0 0.001 0 50 0.01` still reads the seven spins in the
same tree order, which is the check that the restructure kept the panel's contents.
Two days of grief came out of one GTK fact, now in the invariants: an expander's child
is not in the widget-parent chain (`gtk_widget_get_parent()` is NULL for it even after
the window is presented, while `gtk_expander_get_child()` returns it), so the probe
walk had to start there instead of at the panel. The throwaway program that settled it
is what stopped the workaround -- a second root in the file plus a code attach -- from
being the answer.
The panel's shape -- the title row with its add button, the one statistics switch
the whole panel shares, and the box the readings go into -- now lives in
src/ui/measures-panel.ui. The readings stay in code: each row is a measurement a
user placed, rebuilt whenever the set or the mode changes.
A faithful move, not a redesign: the same margins, spacing, labels, tooltips, flat
classes and insensitive Reset button, the same two lambdas on the same two signals.
The frame is read back through the dump line, which grew the two fields that can
disagree with the code that drives them -- `measures pane: n=4 revealed=0
marks_shown=6 pane_rows=4 pane_w=0 pane_h=0 switch_on=1 reset_sensitive=1`. In that
reading pane_rows=4 is the four readout rows having landed in the frame's
`measures_list`, and switch_on/reset_sensitive are the switch widget and the Reset
button following measure_stats_on, which the probe set through the same signal a user
would. `check_ui` type-checks the file (8 ok, 0 failed) and the build stays at four
warnings.
The last hand-built UI outside ui.cpp. The window, its header bar, its two pages and the
four buttons that are about the chooser rather than about a source now live in
src/ui/source-chooser.ui; the rows stay in code because a source row and a waveform row
are data, rebuilt whenever the known hosts or the recent files change.
The pages were a GtkNotebook and are an AdwViewStack under an AdwViewSwitcherBar, which
is what current libadwaita asks for and the same information without a tab strip. The
three actions moved from a button row at the foot into the header bar, the shape
source-form.ui already uses -- and deliberately without receives-default, since Enter
must keep activating the selected row.
Nothing carries a value: the tooltips and labels moved as they were, the handlers are
the same functions, and the switch is by page *name* rather than by index.
The probe reads the frame back -- `[sources] chooser ui: page='sources' title='Sources'
icon=yes page='waveforms' … switcher_wired=1 buttons=[prefs=1 new_host=1 open=1
cancel=1]` -- so a .ui that lost an id is named instead of opening a window with a hole
in it, and `check_ui` type-checks the file against the GIR (7 ok, 0 failed).
Two things the checks caught while doing it: the new frame dropped the call that fills
the waveforms page (the unused-function warning), and `AdwViewStackPage` is a GObject
that *wraps* a child rather than being one, so reading the pages needs
adw_view_stack_get_page().
Fifteen display strings in the two preference forms were written as GTK mnemonics -- `_Directory`,
`_Server`, `Multicast _group`, `_Theme` and the rest -- but the property that makes GTK read them was
never set, so GTK drew the underscore literally: `_Directory` in the row, not a D with a line under it.
Two switches are involved, FALSE by default in each case. `GtkLabel`/`GtkButton` take `use-underline`;
the rows take `AdwPreferencesRow:use-underline`, "whether an embedded underline in the title indicates a
mnemonic". The two buttons in the source form already set it (so their mnemonics worked and showed no
underscore); the thirteen rows did not. All thirteen now do.
The row classes that carry the property are not all related -- AdwEntryRow has its own, while AdwSpinRow,
AdwComboRow and AdwSwitchRow get it through AdwActionRow -- so the probe reads it by name on a GObject
(g_object_class_find_property, then g_object_get) rather than casting to one row type; a cast to a
`GtkWidget*` where the type is only forward-declared does not compile at all.
`_Cancel` and `_Connect` both claimed C in the same form, so Alt+C could only reach one of them: that
marker was unreachable, which is worse than absent because it is in the source to be trusted. `_Connect`
becomes `Conn_ect`, freeing C for Cancel.
[prefs-probe] reads the count (4/4) on the real widgets; check_ui validates the property against the GIR
for every object in every .ui file, inherited properties included.
The sidebar's width was a GtkPaned divider position: `window - 940` in pixels. On any window
narrower than 940 px the divider landed past the right edge and the sidebar came up 0 px wide,
reachable only by dragging the divider back.
Every attempt that kept the paned failed for that reason -- deriving the position from the paned's
own width, re-parenting the column, property-form children, code-set size requests. The mechanism was
the fault, so it is gone: the row is an AdwOverlaySplitView, which is what a utility sidebar is in
GNOME, with min-sidebar-width = max-sidebar-width = 320 in pixels. Its width is therefore its own at
any window size, and when there is no room beside the plot it *overlays* the plot (collapsed, set from
the window's width in tick()) instead of being squeezed to nothing.
Two things found on the way, both recorded in the invariants:
- sidebar-width-fraction is a 0..1 fraction of the window whatever sidebar-width-unit says. Setting a
pixel count there is a GObject critical and it falls back to 0.25, which is why the sidebar first
read 560. The width is pinned with min/max instead.
- the window opened at its content minimum (756 px, the plot column plus the sidebar) because the
explicit gtk_window_set_default_size() was dropped when the window moved into the .ui. Restored.
[sidebar-probe] reads both states and is the guard: window=756 sidebar=320 under a 2x scale, which is
the case that used to read 0.
src/ui/cursors-panel.ui holds the panel's shape -- the header with the mode dropdown and the reset
button, and the grid the two cursor times are read in. What is not in it is the grid's contents,
which follow the cursor mode and the rows and are rebuilt whenever either changes.
Panels need a builder that outlives them, unlike the dialogs, which are rebuilt on every opening: a
widget belongs to the builder that built it, so App::ui_builders holds each panel's for the life of
the window. ui_load() is that, in ui_widgets.cpp.
make test-ui also checks that udpscope-ui.gresource.xml lists every .ui file now. That was the third
trap of this refactor -- a file on disk but not in the resource is a Gtk-ERROR at load, which aborts
-- and it is a compile-time mistake that nothing else in the build could see. Verified by unlisting
the new file and watching the check fail, then restoring it.
[cursors-probe] reads as it did: all four modes, pane=1, the timings and the drag cases.
src/ui/main-window.ui holds the window, its two panes, the plot column with the status line under it,
and the sidebar's scroller. What stays in code is what depends on the stream: the events pane, the two
plot areas, the sidebar's panels and the status popover, each put into a slot by id.
The header bar is deliberately not in the file. It is the window's own titlebar, every button on it is
wired to an action, and an AdwApplicationWindow refuses a titlebar outright -- a fatal Adwaita-ERROR
rather than a warning that leaves the window merely ugly -- so the window is a GtkApplicationWindow and
the header bar stays where it was.
gtk_paned_set_position() is the other thing that had to stay in code, and the reason is order rather
than shape: it clamps against its children *now*, so stating it before the sidebar's panels exist moved
the plot column by ~180 px.
The layout, events and box-zoom probes read what they read before this change, and the header reads
window_button_w=130 bar_w=756 as it always has -- checked by building the previous commit and running
the same probe against it, because the layout numbers in the notes turned out to be stale from an
earlier session. Five UI files now.
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.
src/ui/preferences.ui is an AdwPreferencesDialog whose rows are libadwaita's own -- AdwEntryRow,
AdwSpinRow, AdwSwitchRow, AdwComboRow, AdwButtonRow -- instead of a label and a bare GtkEntry in a
GtkBox. There is no Apply button: a row applies as it changes, which is what those widgets are
designed around, and [prefs-probe] reads the settings file back after every change.
The folder chooser is cancellable now, so a picker still open when the dialog closes cannot write
into a row that is gone; the cancellable is also how the probe takes the cancel path without a
mouse.
Two traps cost a run each and are recorded in docs/claude/invariants-gtk-and-chrome.md: an
AdwDialog is not a GtkWindow (it cannot parent a GtkFileDialog, and in floating mode it adds a
native surface to gtk_window_get_toplevels() that is neither a widget nor a window), and a .ui
that is not listed in the GResource is a Gtk-ERROR at runtime rather than a build failure -- which
is exactly what the probe opening every window is for.
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