The window and its controls

Main toolbar

From the left: Back, Forward, Home and Reload; zoom out, the zoom, zoom in and Fit; the navigator and Open…; the display's name; and on the right the window's pin, the layout list and ☰, a menu of the rest (Auto-size, Bring all windows to front, Close all other windows and the layout actions).

• Clicking the zoom shows the display at 100% and sizes the window to it (and the navigator, when shown).
• A narrow window keeps Back, Home, the zoom and Fit, and moves the rest into ☰.
• On a small high-DPI screen the toolbar and menus are scaled down so they take a small share of it; --ui-scale F (or BOBVIEW_UI_SCALE=F) fixes their size.

Window size

The window opens at the size of the first display (when the screen has room). With Auto-size (in ☰, on by default) it is resized to each display you open, unless it is maximised or full screen; turn it off to keep the window's size and scale each display to fit. -z ZOOM fixes the zoom instead of fitting the window.

On a widget

• Hover to see its PV and value.
• Right-click (long-press on a touch screen) to copy the PV name, its value or a caget/pvget command, open the PV details, Trend it, Trend with rule PVs, or add it to an open trend. See Trend PVs for the trend window's own controls.
• Middle-click to copy its PV name, as in EDM and MEDM: a middle-click in a terminal then pastes it, and one on a trend or in archiveview plots it (a Channel Access, PV Access, loc:// or sim:// name; for a formula use Trend). The widget flashes and the status line says "Copied name". See Copying a PV name.
• On a touch screen, pinch to zoom.

Copying a PV name

A middle-click on a widget, or Copy PV name in its right-click menu, puts the PV name on both the clipboard (for Ctrl+V) and the primary selection (for a middle-click, on Linux). The name is the one other tools take:

• macros expanded, and a Channel Access name bare and whole (BL01T-EA-DET-01:COUNT, not ca://BL01T-EA-DET-01:COUNT);
• a PV Access name keeps its pva://;
• a loc:// PV keeps its prefix but not its type and initial value (loc://x, not loc://x<VDouble>(1.5)); a sim:// PV is copied whole, its parameters too (sim://sine(0, 10, 0.1));
• a formula copies the PVs it reads, each named as above, not its text.

A widget copies its own PV only, not the PVs its rules read. An XY plot or strip chart, which has no PV of its own, copies its traces' PVs. Several names are separated by spaces.

On X11 bobview holds the primary selection itself, so it is lost when bobview exits, as with any X application; this works over ssh -X too. On Wayland bobview uses the compositor's data-control protocol where it has one, and XWayland's primary selection otherwise. Windows, macOS and the browser have no primary selection, so there the name goes to the clipboard only (in the browser, if it allows the page to write to the clipboard). Middle-click in the browser is untested, and the browser may start autoscrolling on it.

Display windows

A display window (one opened beside the main window; see Pinned windows and the viewer) has the native title bar only: its toolbar (Back, Forward, Reload, zoom and Home) is hidden until you show it. While the pointer is over the window, small buttons appear in the top-right corner of the display: Back (while the toolbar is hidden), the window's pin, and a chevron that shows or hides the toolbar. The right-click menu on the display's background has Show toolbar and Close. Pinned windows have 📌 before their title.

Keys

Navigator

The navigator button shows, beside the main window's display, a tree of the displays the home display links to, the displays those link to, and so on.

• A display's links are its widgets' Open display actions, including those in groups, tabs and embedded displays, each display and macros once, named by its button's text (or, in a menu, the action's description).
• A link with no text of its own, or the same text as another link on its display (a row of identical device symbols), is named by the display it opens once that has been read: by the words of its title that macros fill in, such as LB-VA-IONP-04 from Ion Pump Controller - $(device), else by its whole title. The tooltip gives the title, file and macros.
• Clicking a node opens its display as a link in the main window would, so with the main window pinned it goes to the viewer; shift and ctrl work as for a link. Displays open in a window are in bold.
• Displays are read from their files, without connecting their PVs, as their nodes are shown, so the tree is read one level ahead of what is open. A display that links back to one above it is marked ↻ and not opened again; one that can't be read is marked ⚠. A command action's display (a DLS launcher script) is found by running its script, so only when its node is opened or clicked.
• The filter box lists the displays read so far whose name or file matches; ⟳ reads them all again.
• Showing or hiding the navigator widens or narrows the window by its width (unless maximised or full screen), so the display keeps its size and zoom.

Status line

Shows write errors and refusals, what a copy has just put on the clipboard, and counts "N widgets with scripts ignored" and "N unsupported widgets" for a display that has them.