visualdynamics.gui.console

console

The console: the session as Python, along the bottom of the window.

A tab, not a menu (Brandon, 2026-08-30): the tab announces that the console exists, sitting collapsed at the bottom edge, and clicking it is the whole gesture — expand to read, click again to put it away. It shows project.journal — every verb and settings write of this sitting as the line that replays it — selectable and copyable, so the Python-comfortable half of the audience can lift a session straight into a script while everyone else never has to see it.

Read-only by decision: an input line was designed and dropped (Brandon, 2026-08-30) — the journal's value is copy-out. PLAN.md, "The console".

Classes:

Name	Description
ConsolePanel	The scrollback, and the tab that floats over the views' edge.

Functions:

Name	Description
elided	A journal line as the console shows it: whole up to

Classes

ConsolePanel

ConsolePanel(parent: QWidget | None = None)

Bases: QWidget

The scrollback, and the tab that floats over the views' edge.

The panel holds only the scrollback, so collapsed it is zero rows tall — the first cut reserved a full-width strip for the tab and the empty strip read as a grey bar across the window (Brandon, 2026-08-31). The tab is not in any layout: float_over overlays it on the bottom edge of whatever the console expands under, the way a drawer handle sits on the drawer. Nothing built in does this — Qt's tab widgets are document tabs and the native macOS drawer is long deprecated — so the handle is placed by hand and follows its host's resizes.

Methods:

Name	Description
float_over	Overlay the tab on host's bottom edge, centred, and keep
refresh	Bring the scrollback up to date with the session's journal.

Attributes:

Name	Type	Description
showing	bool	Whether the scrollback is expanded.

Source code in src/visualdynamics/gui/console.py

def __init__(self, parent: QWidget | None = None) -> None:
    super().__init__(parent)
    column = QVBoxLayout(self)
    column.setContentsMargins(0, 0, 0, 0)
    column.setSpacing(0)
    self._host: QWidget | None = None

    # A tab, drawn as one: a flared handle centred on the edge with
    # a chevron either side of the word, to the design Brandon had
    # made (2026-09-03) — the first cut was a styled button with a
    # font triangle, and before that a full-width bar that read as
    # a divider (2026-08-31).
    self.tab: DrawerTab = DrawerTab('Console')
    self.tab.setToolTip(
        'This session as Python — every act as the line that '
        'replays it, copyable into a script')
    self.tab.toggled.connect(self._toggled)

    self.view: QPlainTextEdit = QPlainTextEdit()
    self.view.setReadOnly(True)
    self.view.setFont(
        QFontDatabase.systemFont(QFontDatabase.SystemFont.FixedFont))
    self.view.setFixedHeight(CONSOLE_HEIGHT)
    self.view.hide()
    column.addWidget(self.view)

    #: what the scrollback currently shows, compared by value: the
    #: journal edits its own last line when a drag settles, so the
    #: refresh rewrites on any difference rather than appending
    self._shown: tuple[str, ...] = ()
    self._toggled(False)

Attributes

showing property

showing: bool

Whether the scrollback is expanded.

Methods:

float_over

float_over(host: QWidget) -> None

Overlay the tab on host's bottom edge, centred, and keep it there through resizes.

Parameters:

Name	Type	Description	Default
host	QWidget	A plain container holding the views and this panel — the tab rides the drawer's top edge like a handle. Never a QSplitter: a splitter adopts any child widget as a new pane, and the first cut's tab became a third panel parked at the right edge.	required

Source code in src/visualdynamics/gui/console.py

def float_over(self, host: QWidget) -> None:
    """Overlay the tab on `host`'s bottom edge, centred, and keep
    it there through resizes.

    Parameters
    ----------
    host : QWidget
        A plain container holding the views *and* this panel — the
        tab rides the drawer's top edge like a handle. Never a
        QSplitter: a splitter adopts any child widget as a new
        pane, and the first cut's tab became a third panel parked
        at the right edge.
    """
    self._host = host
    self.tab.setParent(host)
    host.installEventFilter(self)
    self.tab.show()
    self._place_tab()

refresh

refresh(journal: list[str]) -> None

Bring the scrollback up to date with the session's journal.

Cheap when nothing changed — one tuple comparison — and a full rewrite when something did, because the journal is allowed to edit its own tail (a drag session settles to one line) and an append-only view would keep the superseded write.

Parameters:

Name	Type	Description	Default
journal	list of str	The project's session journal, shown verbatim.	required

Source code in src/visualdynamics/gui/console.py

def refresh(self, journal: list[str]) -> None:
    """Bring the scrollback up to date with the session's journal.

    Cheap when nothing changed — one tuple comparison — and a full
    rewrite when something did, because the journal is allowed to
    edit its own tail (a drag session settles to one line) and an
    append-only view would keep the superseded write.

    Parameters
    ----------
    journal : list of str
        The project's session journal, shown verbatim.
    """
    lines = tuple(journal)
    if lines == self._shown:
        return
    self._shown = lines
    # a line is shown whole up to a screenful and elided past it,
    # with its length said: a live edit of a controller's target
    # journals a draft of sixty thousand band pairs, megabytes of
    # text, and rendering that twice per drag was the drag's whole
    # cost (2026-09-06). The journal itself keeps the full line;
    # the session script is where it is read whole
    self.view.setPlainText('\n'.join(elided(line) for line in lines))
    bar = self.view.verticalScrollBar()
    bar.setValue(bar.maximum())

Functions:

elided

elided(line: str) -> str

A journal line as the console shows it: whole up to SHOWN_CHARACTERS, else its head and how long it really is.

Source code in src/visualdynamics/gui/console.py

def elided(line: str) -> str:
    """A journal line as the console shows it: whole up to
    `SHOWN_CHARACTERS`, else its head and how long it really is."""
    if len(line) <= SHOWN_CHARACTERS:
        return line
    return (f'{line[:SHOWN_CHARACTERS]} … [{len(line):,} characters; the '
            'session script has the whole line]')