udpscope/docs/claude/invariants-plot-and-layout.md

# Invariants: the plot, the figure and the layout

How `plot::Figure`/`plot::Plot` may and may not be driven, what a row's state belongs to, the layout editor's overlay, and the rule that layout must not depend on content.

Part of [CLAUDE.md](../../CLAUDE.md). These are rules that cost a defect to learn; read the ones touching the area you are editing before you edit it.

- **`plot::Plot` cannot remove or retarget a trace.** Hence fixed trace slots created
  up front and rebinding via `SlotSeries`; a *name* change (legend text) is the one
  thing that forces a rebuild. Cursors are parked outside the axis range instead of
  removed.
- **A `Figure`'s row count is fixed at construction**, so `RowSet::rebuild_all()` builds
  a *new* figure and the area is handed it (`PlotArea::set_figure()`); it costs no GL
  state. That makes one path for "a row's traces changed" and "the row count changed",
  and it is why `rebuild_all()` restates a pinned event window (`pinned_pre_`/
  `pinned_post_`) instead of re-framing on the live edge — a drop during trigger mode
  would otherwise throw the frozen view onto the stream, where nothing moves it off
  again until the next latch. `PlotArea::create()` is handed `App::placeholder_plot`,
  never a row: the area keeps a reference to the plot it was created with, and a rebuild
  destroys every row.
- **A trace is a slot with a name *and* a channel; a name alone is not one.** `Row::channel[s]`
  is re-resolved by `RowSet::bind()` every frame (slots are identified by name, see above), and
  `-1` means the model built no channel for that name. Some names can *never* bind: the stream's
  **time signal** is skipped by `build_channels_locked()` however often it is enabled, so a slot
  holding it has a name for ever and data never. The plot showed nothing for it, which is why it
  went unnoticed, but the cursors pane's `mix` mode drew one line per *named* slot and so gave
  each phantom a row that could only read `--` — "the pane shows a lot of empty signals that do
  not exist", six lines over three real traces. Two halves to the rule. (1) Anything that counts
  traces counts `channel[s] >= 0`, not `!signal_name[s].empty()` — and a per-frame bind means the
  cursors pane cannot key its rebuild on `generation()` alone, hence `App::cursors_pane_bound`, a
  bit per row/slot (`kMaxRows * kSlotsPerRow` is 32, so one `std::uint32_t`): a trace that
  appears without a structural change still gets its line. (2) `apply_layout()` refuses a name
  that cannot produce a channel (`ScopeModel::is_time_signal()`), because such a name was
  **sticky**: `collect_layout()` writes `signal_name` back verbatim, so one that got into a
  session file was re-saved every session for ever. The refusal also heals an existing file on
  the next save. How the names first got in is unexplained — the drop path already refuses a
  signal with no channel — most likely an older build or a CONFIG whose time signal was not yet
  classified as one; the fix is the stickiness and the counting, not a guess at the origin.
- **A row's contents are state of the `RowSet`, not of the figure.** `insert_row()` and
  `remove_row()` shift that state with `carry_row()` and let `rebuild_all()` re-deal the
  figure handles, so inserting above row 1 moves what row 1 plotted down to row 2 rather
  than renumbering the rows under the user. `carry_row()` deliberately copies fields
  instead of assigning a whole `Row`: a `Row` also holds the figure handles (`plot`, the
  axis and cursor ids) and the `SlotSeries` objects the traces point at, and those belong
  to the row's *position*. It clears the destination's slot bindings for the same reason —
  the next `bind()` re-resolves them, and without the clear the frame in between draws the
  moved row's samples under the new row's legend.
  Both call `rebuild_all()` themselves, so their callers must re-point the area
  (`PlotArea::set_figure()`) directly; `relayout_areas()` is no help, since it only acts on
  a *dirty* row.
- **The layout editor's buttons are *separate* overlay children, never one transparent
  child covering the area.** A `GtkOverlay` child is picked wherever its allocation is, and
  `gtk_widget_set_can_target(FALSE)` takes a widget's children out of picking with it, so a
  full-area `GtkFixed` would swallow every pan, drop and hover the editor is not interested
  in. Each button is therefore a small widget aligned to a corner or the centre and placed
  by its **margins**, and the overlay is only measured from its main child, so moving them
  cannot reach the plot's layout.
  They are placed from `FigureLayout::rows` — the rects the frame was *drawn* from —
  divided by `PlotArea::device_scale()`, because a `Rect` is framebuffer pixels and a GTK
  margin is logical ones. Reading the figure's own rects rather than dividing the widget
  height by the row count is what keeps a `×` on the row it names when the rows stop being
  an equal division. `sync_layout_editor()` runs every frame on purpose:
  `gtk_widget_set_margin_*()` returns early on an unchanged value, so a settled layout costs
  the comparisons and nothing else, and a resize needs no notification.
- **Trace slots are identified by signal name, not channel index.** Enabling a signal
  or a new CONFIG renumbers the channel list, so an index would silently re-point a
  trace at another signal.
- **Layout must not depend on content.** The y gutter is reserved at the widest label
  `TickFormat::Si` can produce *for an axis with no unit* — a sign, three significant
  figures and a one-glyph prefix, measured and not counted in characters — and only ever
  grows; the status label is ellipsized so
  its text cannot drive the paned divider. Both exist to stop per-frame relayout.
  The reservation deliberately does **not** cover `format_si()`'s `%.3g` fallback
  (`-1.23e-45`), which it used to: that form needs a value past 1e24, so it bought a third
  of the gutter for a label no stream produces, and the floor being a monotone maximum over
  the *measured* need means one that did appear widens the gutter for good anyway. Erring
  wide is not free here — it is a third of the plot's width.
  And **nothing may add slack to the gutter it is told**: `note_y_gutter()`'s argument is
  `layout().y_axis_width`, which is `max(measured, floor)` — partly our own answer coming
  back — so a constant added to it compounds. See the ratchet reading under `layout over N frames` in
  [probe-readings.md](probe-readings.md).
  The same rule is why the activity badge is one glyph in three colours rather than
  three glyphs, why the `rate` field collapses to one figure or a range instead of a
  per-channel list, and why `format_elapsed()` steps to a coarser unit instead of
  letting the counter grow: each is a status field whose *width* would otherwise depend
  on the stream, and the status row is directly above the plot.
  The reservation goes on the **figure** (`Figure::set_min_y_gutter()`, added to the
  plotter for this), not on the rows: `Figure::layout()` clears every row's
  `set_min_y_gutter()` to measure what its own labels need, so a floor written onto the
  rows survives exactly until the next layout.
- **The right-hand band is a want, and the left gutter is a measurement.** The two sides of
  the plot are not symmetric in kind: the left holds the y labels, so it is measured and
  floored; the right holds nothing, so there is nothing to measure and `RowSet` simply asks
  for half the widest time label plus the label padding (`right_gutter_px_`, reserved in the
  same one-shot block). Half a label is the figure that matters: an x tick label is
  *centred* on its tick and a live axis is `[-window, 0]`, so there is always a tick exactly
  on the axes' right edge, and with `axes` flush to the viewport half of that label was
  drawn outside the plot. Both go on the **figure** and for the same reason — the rows have
  to end on one column as well as start on one — which is why `apply_gutters()` applies the
  pair and `rebuild_all()` calls it: a new `Figure` carries neither.
- **A trace's colour is indexed by *signal*, not by trace slot.** `Row::color_index`
  stores it and `signal_color_index()` (ui.cpp) computes it from the signal list, so a
  signal dropped on two rows is one colour and the signal panel's chip names a trace
  unambiguously. `plot::Plot` fixes a colour at `add_trace()`, so changing one needs a
  figure rebuild — which `assign()` already forces. A signal on no plot gets
  `RowSet::unplotted_color()` (grey) rather than no chip, so the panel's rows stay the
  same height.
- **`RowSet::signal_color()` is the only route to a trace's colour.** The user can override the
  palette entry per signal (clicking its chip; `set_signal_color()` / `clear_signal_color()`,
  keyed by **name**, because a palette index is positional and a CONFIG renumbers), and that
  override is exactly the state in which two routes to a colour disagree. So `install()` builds
  the trace through this call and all three chip sites — the signal panel, the measures pane and
  the cursors pane — read it too; none of them may index `palette_color()` itself. An override
  marks every row holding the signal dirty (`mark_signal_dirty()`, not `assign()`: what the slot
  *holds* did not change) and the rebuild happens on the frame tick via `relayout_pending`,
  because `relayout_areas()` is the one place that builds a figure and re-points the area at it.
  `UDPSCOPE_PROBE_COLOR_MS` reads the result back out of `plot::Plot::trace()` and out of the
  chip's own markup, since asking the resolver twice would assert nothing.