intuiTUIve gaps: bottom¶

Round 1: bottom¶

examples/top.rs rebuilds bottom (btm), the system monitor, on intuiTUIve with no framework change. It is 2,706 lines (after rustfmt): about 325 are the Linux data source (/proc/stat, /proc/meminfo, /proc/net/dev, /proc/diskstats, /proc/[pid]/{stat,status,io,cmdline}, /sys/class/hwmon, df for the disks' sizes and kill for the signals, all through std), 700 the domain (bottom's units, the sliding history, the search query language, sorted, grouped and tree rows), and the rest the widgets, layout, keys and dialogs. The source sits behind a Source trait (sample(), kill(pid, signal)), sampled on a latest_every thread. Its tests (tests/top.rs, 769 lines, 25 tests) feed scripted samples through that trait, record the signals sent, run the app on the app's clock (wait_for_tasks(true), Driver::advance) and assert on the rendered text.

What is there, with bottom's layout, strings, colours and default keys:

• The default layout: CPU across the top (30%), memory beside temperatures over disks (40%, 4:3), network beside processes (30%, 1:1), plain borders, the focused widget's border in light blue.
• CPU: a Braille line per core and the average over a 60 s window (60s to 0s, 0% to 100%), the legend at the right (15%): All, AVG, CPU0… with their use, each in its colour; ↑/↓ on the legend picks what the graph shows.
• Memory: RAM and swap lines, the legend box at the top right (RAM: 25% 4.0GiB/16.0GiB), hidden when too big, as bottom's.
• Network: RX and TX in bits a second, bottom's linear y scale (the top 1.5 times the largest rate in view, four labels in its unit), the legend RX: 1.4Kb/s All: 3.4GB.
• Temperatures and Disks tables, sorted by s/t and d m u n t p r w (again reverses), or a click on a header.
• Processes: PID, Name, CPU%, Mem%, R/s, W/s, T.Read, T.Write, User, State, Time, bottom's cell formats; sorted by CPU; c m p n sort (again reverses), I inverts, s/F6 opens the "Sort By" menu at the left, Tab groups by name (PID becomes Count, usage summed), P the full command, % memory as sizes, t/F5 tree mode (├─, └─, │, + for a collapsed branch; Space, +, -, ←, → collapse and expand), z hides kernel threads, Ctrl+U/Ctrl+D half a page.
• Search (/ or Ctrl+F): bottom's box under the table (> query, an error line, Case(Alt+C) Whole(Alt+W) Regex(Alt+R) lit when on, Esc to close); the query language's keywords (pid, cpu, mem, memb with units, read, write, user, state), comparisons, and (or a space), or, !; filtering as you type; Esc closes and keeps the filter; a tree keeps the ancestors of what it finds.
• Kill (dd, F9 or Delete): bottom's Linux dialog, "Kill process 'cargo' with PID 420? Press ENTER to confirm." over the list of signals with 15: TERM picked (0: Cancel sends nothing); a group's every process; a failure is an error notification. --disable_advanced_kill gives the yes/no confirm (cx.confirm).
• Widget focus: Ctrl or Shift+arrows, H J K L and A S W D move to the widget on that side, from where each was drawn; a click selects one.
• Expand (e): the selected widget fills the screen with Esc to go back at the right; e or Esc returns, the focus kept.
• Zoom: +/- (and the wheel over a graph) change that graph's window by 15 s, from 30 s to the 10 minutes kept; = resets it.
• Freeze (f, Frozen, press 'f' to unfreeze on the last row), reset (Ctrl+R), help (?, bottom's sections in a scrolling box), quit (q, Q, Ctrl+C).
• Basic mode (-b): per-core pipe gauges (AVG [||||| 39%]), RAM/SWP gauges, RX/TX and totals, and one table at a time with bottom's ◄ Processes/Temperatures ► carousel, moved with Ctrl+←/→ or H/L.

Left out: the battery, GPU, disk I/O and temperature graphs, cache and ARC lines, custom layouts from a config file (and the config file itself), regex search (no regex engine among the crate's dependencies: the toggle shows, a pattern matches as text), the time axis auto-hiding, the legend position options, the packet counts, the widgets' scroll position in their titles, and per-process GPU columns. Linux only.

What is bespoke, and why:

• The rectangle registry and neighbour search (Places, neighbour, about 120 lines): bottom moves the selection by its layout tree; intuiTUIve has no directional focus, so each widget's focusable node is kept by name with a RectHandle, and the nearest one on a side is picked. It is also how a node a switch builds later gets the focus (a pending name and a watch on its handle). Both are gaps below.
• The pipe gauges in basic mode are formatted text (pipe_gauge), as wide as viewport() allows: there is no gauge node in that style, and a text closure does not know its width.
• The history (History, series): a sliding window by time over the samples, what a time-series chart would hold.

New gaps and bugs¶

Friction with the existing APIs¶

• Panels and ratatui's Block titles differ by a glyph. ratatui puts Sort By against the corner (┌ Sort By ┐, 11 wide); a panel puts a line glyph first (┌─ Sort By ─┐, 13), so bottom's narrow boxes cut their titles. A .title_inset(0) would port them as they were.
• Charts are rebuilt whole every sample. renderable(|| Chart) makes every dataset again from the history (seven series, 60 points each); fine at a second, but a time-series node that appends a point would be cheaper and would not need the History in the example.
• switch keeps every page, which suits tabs, but the expanded views, the process tables per title set and the search box each keep their nodes (and their watches) forever once shown.
• The process table's sort is two signals. The table needs its own Signal<Option<(usize, Order)>> for the header's arrow and clicks; the view keeps the sort with the other options, so two watches mirror them.
• A modal's list needs a name to be found: focused_name() is None for an unnamed list, which read at first as the focus being lost.
• previews_keys everywhere. Four containers preview keys (each widget's panel, the process table's, the temperature and disk tables'), each to get round a table's own bindings.

Components that would help¶

Round 2: rebuilt on round 6¶

examples/top.rs went from 2,706 lines to 2,415 (tests 769, 25 tests, all passing; one assertion changed, below).

Replaced¶

New with the components, at no cost: the CPU panel's title carries the load averages (CPU ─ 0.52 0.48 0.40, title_with), as bottom's does; "Esc to go back" is an add_title_with that follows the expanded widget; the process and disk tables drop whole columns from the right when narrow (Column::priority), as bottom does, where they were cut with …. The Shift+↑/↓ bug is fixed in the core, but the widgets' previews_keys stay for the tables' letter keys (s, t, d…).

Behaviour changes¶

• A bad search says `lots` is not a number for `cpu` (the query module's message) instead of bottom's "Invalid number: lots"; the two tests asserting the text now expect it. The component's message is the better one (it names the field, and QueryError::at says where), so the test changed rather than the message being rewritten.
• user = ro no longer matches root: the query module's = on text compares the whole value, where bottom's (and the clone's) contained it. user:ro (the field's Contains matching) does. A gap below.

Still hand-built, and why¶

• The Linux source (Linux, 325 lines) and the unit formatting (binary_string, per_second, bits_label…): domain, plugin gaps from round 1.
• History, series and the three chart builders: no time-series chart with a sliding window yet.
• The tree mode (tree_rows and its ├─/└─/+ prefixes in the Name column): round 6's keyed trees are a tree widget, not a tree table; bottom's tree is a table with every column.
• The pipe gauges (pipe_gauge, widths from viewport()): no gauge node, and a text still cannot read its own width (fit_text picks among forms, it does not build one for a width).
• Grouping, sorting and filtering the rows (proc_rows): the rows are recomputed per sample; view_of is for large Send + Sync sources on a worker thread, more than 200 processes need.
• The help is bottom's text (HELP), not the bindings' list: HelpOptions::all_panes would list the app's own descriptions, in its own sections, not bottom's.

New gaps¶

Round 1's still open: a time-series chart with a sliding window (plugin viz on a core window_by_time), unit formatting (rs-rich-ext), a system-metrics source (plugin), layout from a config, a gauge node, a regex matcher.

Bugs found¶

None in the components used. columns_with, priority, focus_scope with bind_directional_focus, shown_when on flex children and containers, add_title_with returning an empty string (it draws nothing) and focus_within on a node shown by a signal all behaved as documented on the first try; every focus test passed unchanged.

Components that would help¶