slosh.git/include/app_internal.h, branch v0.1.8

theme: the busy spinner is its own colour (tab_status_spinner)

2026-09-22T13:38:08Z

It was drawn in tab_status_busy, the colour of the words it sits beside, which made one decision out of two. The words have to stay readable at a glance and a mark does not: a theme may well want the glyph loud and the text calm -- or the text in the accent and the mark a quiet dot -- and with one entry neither is available without moving both. Unset it follows tab_status_busy, derived after it and from whatever that resolved to, named or derived, so nothing changes for anyone who does not ask and no theme in contrib needs a line. `--dump-theme` writes both, like every other colour the compositor draws.

osc 5577: `busy`, and a sidebar that shows it (busy_mark)

2026-09-22T13:12:02Z

A status is a line of text, and a line of text cannot say whether it is still true. "building 3/7" reads exactly the same while it builds and ten minutes after it stopped, which is the one thing somebody reading it from another tab wants to know -- and the only workaround available to a program was to write the answer into the words and keep rewriting them. So `busy`: printf '\033]5577;1;status;make test\033\\' printf '\033]5577;1;busy;1\033\\' ... printf '\033]5577;1;busy;0\033\\' A flag of its own rather than a field of `status`, because a status is the *whole* payload after the verb -- `status;a;b;c` has always been the text "a;b;c" -- so anything added to that line would change what every existing sender means, including the five pi extensions D1 promises byte compatibility to. Orthogonal, so a program can leave one line up and toggle the other; anything but 0/false/no/off is on; `clear` takes both; and a pane whose program has gone is never busy, whatever it last claimed, because a spinner turning under a dead tab is a lie you keep looking at. In a sidebar the row turns `tab_status_busy` -- the theme's accent, derived like the other status colours, so no theme needs a line -- and takes a spinner in the column `tab_bar_padding` was already holding blank, so nothing reflows when a program starts or stops working. `busy_mark` is the frames, separated by spaces: one frame is a static mark and costs nothing, several make it turn, and only then does the session keep a frame clock -- via the same `animating` flag an animated shader uses, so the cost lands only while such a row is actually composed, and `""` drops the mark entirely and leaves the colour to say it. The frame is a pure function of the clock, like every other pulse here, so two clients attached to one session show the same one. `panes` now reports `status` and `busy`, which is the scriptable half of the same fact: what a pane says about itself, without reading its screen.

themes: a picker that wears them as you browse (C-a t)

2026-09-22T10:50:12Z

`theme_name` is a line in a file, and a name in a list tells you nothing about a colour scheme. So the picker previews by *applying*: moving the selection puts that theme on, which is the only honest preview of a palette meant to dress a whole session -- a swatch in a list would be a small lie about it, and the session is already on screen behind the box. It opens on the theme being worn rather than at the top, so the first arrow press moves off it instead of silently changing the session, and the row your config names says so, because "which one is this" and "which one comes back on restart" are two different facts the moment you switch. Escape puts back what was worn, since a picker that changed your session by being looked at is one you stop opening. Enter keeps it for the session and says as much. Only C-s writes `theme_name` into your config, which is the one place in the UI where a keystroke edits it, so it is a deliberate chord and the footer says so: "C-s keeps it, esc undoes". Reuses the picker the finder, the palette and the projects list already wear -- one machine with a subject, so the query, the selection, the mouse, the frame and the scroll behaviour are the ones already tested. The list is scanned on the keystroke, like the projects are: the moment it opens is the moment it has to be right, and a theme written since the session started is exactly the one being looked for. With nothing to list it toasts the directory it looked in rather than opening an empty box. `t` was free: tabs cycle on tab, and new-tab has had `c` since the first day.

tabs: a plate under the ones you are not in (tab_idle_bg)

2026-09-22T09:59:10Z

The active tab has been filled with the accent since the strip existed; every other tab was words on the background. That leaves the strip with one shape on it and nothing to compare it against -- where a tab ends, how far the row you are about to click reaches, and in the sidebar which rows are tabs rather than statuses, all had to be read off the text. tab_idle_bg fills them. Barely off the background and in the label's own grey, because this is not a second highlight: it gives a tab edges, and it gives the accent something to be brighter than, which on a strip of short labels is most of how the eye finds the tab it is in. Hover keeps it for the same reason the active tab keeps its fill -- losing the plate under the pointer would read as the tab going away -- so hovering still lands on the text, and the bell mark sits on the plate rather than punching a hole in it. Derived a third of the way from default_bg to tab_idle when nobody names it, the same bargain tab_status_fg and tab_status_stripe already make: both ends are colours every theme in contrib defines, so each gets a plate in its own family -- paper lightens, phosphor greens, mono stays grey -- without a line added to any of them. Naming it wins, and naming your own background is how you ask for the bare tabs back. The `+ new tab` button and the gaps between tabs stay unpainted: the button is the one row in the list that does not mean "go here", and tab_gap is air between plates, which is what makes them read as separate tabs at all.

sidebar: a status can have more than one row (tab_bar_status_lines)

2026-09-20T17:55:03Z

Sixteen cells is not enough for a sentence, and a sentence is what a pane has to say: "add a summary…" is most of a status and none of its meaning. tab_bar_status_lines 3 word-wraps instead of cutting, and the same column carries forty-eight cells rather than sixteen. Wrapped, the rows under a tab stop being a list of panes and become a paragraph each, so the shape no longer says where one pane's status ends and the next begins -- both are italic text down one column. Alternate panes are drawn on alternate bands to say it instead: tab_status_stripe, derived from the theme like tab_status_fg, so a theme that has never heard of any of this still gets a band in its own family. Nothing is painted at one line, where there is no ambiguity to resolve and a band would take a translucent terminal's background away for nothing. 1 is the default and is the old behaviour exactly, down to cutting at the column rather than the last word before it: with no next row to move the word to, breaking early would spend cells on nothing. The reason to prefer a word boundary only exists once there is somewhere for the word to go. Rows count against tab_bar_status as before, so wrapping trades panes for words within the same allowance, and the allowance itself still gives way to the tabs. A status that will not fit whole is dropped whole and reported with the ellipsis, rather than shown as a fragment that reads like the whole thing. Every row of a status is the same `find:` door. tabstatus's buffer goes to 256 to match pane_status's own slot: at one line the drawing cut it anyway, but wrapped it is the whole string that has to survive the trip.

sidebar: statuses wear italic instead of an indent, and can wear colour

2026-09-10T14:32:10Z

Three columns of indent is a fifth of a sixteen-column sidebar, spent saying 'this belongs to the row above'. The slant says it in none: a status now starts in the same column its tab's name starts in, and is set in italic. That also survives the monochrome themes in contrib, where a colour-only distinction would have had nothing to spend. tab_status_fg / tab_status_bg are there for themes that do have colour to spend. The fg follows tab_count when a theme does not name it -- the same declared/derived split apply_scrolled makes -- so the six themes in contrib get coherent status rows without a line added to any of them. The bg is unset by default, because a band is opt-in and 'none' is what a translucent terminal wants; the row is padded so a band that *is* set covers the row rather than the words on it. Two things fell out. The padding loop existed three times and is now pad_cells. And cb_color wrote #000000 for an unset colour, so quietly pinned attach_bg -- 'gray ink on the terminal's own background', says its comment -- to a black band. Unset colours are now written commented out, the same trick the states block uses for what it wants re-derived rather than pinned.

tabs: the strip can stand on its side (tab_bar_side left/right)

2026-09-10T13:40:09Z

A sidebar lists one tab per row down the chosen edge, tab_bar_width columns wide; the panes trade the strip's row for the sidebar's columns in tab_area(), the one place that arithmetic lives. The per-tab cell drawing is extracted from draw_tab_strip (label, rename editor, bell, hover, drop states, hit) and shared, so every mouse verb -- click, double-click rename, drag to a tab, drop on + -- works in both shapes because the hits move with the cells. The strip's indicators (pane count, prefix badge) take the sidebar's bottom rows, reserved first under the same budgeting rule the strip applies from the right. The status line below keeps the full width. A terminal too narrow to give up the columns falls back to top, re-derived per frame, so a resize moves the bar without anyone storing state.

search: a scrollback search bar on /, matches highlighted

2026-09-08T14:58:24Z

C-a / opens an inline search bar on the focused pane's status row, on lib-vt's GhosttySearch (D4's pattern: the scrollback walk, reflow and alt-screen survival are the library's, the UI and the wiring are ours). Type to search live; the viewport follows the current match; up/down (or C-n/C-p) step through them with wraparound; Enter keeps your place, Escape snaps back. A k-of-n counter reads on the right, or "no matches". Every match on screen is tinted, and the one the bar is on is tinted apart -- warm gold by default, painted after the shader pass so the scrolled wash does not dilute a match you are hunting for. Four themeable colours (search_fg/bg, search_cur_fg/bg). Bare / took the key from help, which keeps ?; that needed the legacy decoder to read the shift out of a punctuation byte the way it already did for capitals -- without it ? and / decode identically (SLASH, no mods) and cannot be two keys on a client without the kitty protocol. tests/test_search.py drives it end to end (39 checks): the bar, the counter, stepping and wrap, all-match vs current highlighting, Enter/ Escape, new output updating the count, case-insensitivity, the keyboard belonging to the bar, click-away, and that / and ? no longer collide.

app: cut the modals, toasts and splash out of the images under them

2026-09-06T18:34:26Z

Overlays are painted over the panes and the compositor needs no more than that: painted later is on top. A placement is not painted, though -- the client's terminal draws the image over the cells, in whatever order they arrived -- so an overlay that is only drawn is an overlay an image sits on top of. The cheatsheet came up under a picture and was unreadable through it, in the terminal and in the mirror both. So a frame now records where its overlays landed, and the graphics pass takes them out of a placement exactly as it takes out a float: the modal's box (the cheatsheet and the picker wear the same frame), each toast, and the splash. The list is rebuilt every compose, so a rect that is not registered again is one that is no longer on screen. Only the opaque things are registered. The scrim behind a modal tints what is behind it rather than hiding it, and an image cannot be tinted by us at all -- so a picture beside the cheatsheet stays bright while the text around it is pushed back, which is wrong-looking but a great deal better than the image disappearing while a modal is up. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01CRz3zwZJvBvzsR9k4cj6dd

layout: a float sized but not positioned is centred, per axis

2026-08-30T13:22:51Z

docs/layouts.md always said an absent coordinate takes the centred default; the loader said 0, and a layout float with only w= h= landed in the top-left corner. Now an axis the file does not name is FLOAT_CENTRE, a sentinel no real coordinate can reach, and float_clamp answers it with the middle -- every frame, at whatever size the terminal is by then, until an explicit move or resize writes a real number over it. The webdemo's welcome float is the customer: it must sit centred on a terminal whose size the layout file cannot know. The dump writes a still-centred axis by omission, because the number it happened to land on would pin to this screen's size the one intent that deliberately has none. Every mutating verb already writes back from the drawn rect, so the sentinel survives nothing it should not.