Workspace and appearance

The window fits its content. It grows when a section opens or a second PV is added, and shrinks again when they close. If you resize the window yourself, QtProbe keeps at least that height until the workspace is empty; a maximized window is left alone. Content taller than most of the screen scrolls.

All (Ctrl+1) shows one row per PV: status dot, name, value, units, provider, alarm/connection state, age and a sparkline of recent numeric updates. Age is the time since QtProbe received the PV's last value; it keeps counting while a PV is quiet, so a stalled PV stands out. Narrow windows hide the provider and trend columns. Hover a name for its address and description, or a value for its exact text, IOC time and whether it is a last observation.

Click a row to select it; Ctrl+click adds or removes rows and Shift+click selects a range. Double-click a row, press Enter, or click its tab to inspect it. With the table focused, the arrow keys, Page Up/Down, Home and End move the selection (Shift extends it), Ctrl+A selects every shown row, Ctrl+C copies the selection and Esc clears it; Down in the filter field moves into the table. Right-click for Inspect, Copy rows (tab-separated name, exact value, units, state and IOC time), Copy as CSV, Copy PV names, Open in QtStripTool, Reconnect and Close. A tab's menu offers Copy PV address, Open in QtStripTool, Reconnect and Close PV. The row of the PV shown in the inspector has an accent bar.

Click the PV, Value, State or Age heading to sort: ascending, then descending, then back to the order PVs were added. Names sort naturally (Row:2 before Row:10). State puts disconnected and the most severe alarms first. Value, State and Age re-sort at most once a second so rows do not jump with every update. The filter matches names, providers and descriptions. Alarms and Disconnected show counts and restrict the table to PVs in MINOR, MAJOR or INVALID alarm, or to disconnected PVs; with both on, either kind is shown. Adding a PV clears the filters. Ctrl+PgDown and Ctrl+PgUp step through All and each PV; Inspector (Ctrl+2) returns to the selected PV. All stays pinned at the left of the tab strip; PV tabs elide long names in the middle and scroll beside it when there are many, so the table is one click away from any PV. While the table is shown, the last inspected PV's tab is dimmed; click it to return to that PV. The views share connections and history. Pausing an inspector's display does not pause the table. Up to 100 distinct CA/PVA addresses can be open; the same name with a different provider is a separate PV.

The inspector's first line shows a connection dot, the PV name with a copy button, the alarm badge and the provider. Below are the description, the value with units and display format, and one line with native type, element count, access rights and IOC timestamp in UTC (hover it for the host). Connection problems appear at the start of that line. Status is shown with text as well as color.

Toggle buttons under the write box open sections below the readback: Trend (recent numeric plot and statistics), Adjust (limits, slider, step and dial), Info (searchable metadata), Array (array PVs only), History (monitor events), Record (processing fields and links; see Record explorer) and Structure (PVA PVs only; see Structure browser). Any combination can be open. The choice applies to every open PV and is remembered for later launches. Trend appears only for scalars; arrays and text waveforms use Array instead. Adjust appears only for writable numeric scalars. Reconnect, Stop and Pause are the icons at the right of the same row.

Use View → Appearance to choose Follow system, Light or Dark. The selection is remembered for future launches. View → Zoom in (Ctrl++ or Ctrl+=), Zoom out (Ctrl+−) and Actual size (Ctrl+0) scale all text from 70% to 200% for control-room screens; the zoom is remembered too. Closing the last PV returns to the compact welcome view.

The export button (download icon) beside Add offers the same snapshot, history and session actions as File. It is enabled when a PV is open. Invalid PV addresses produce a message below the entry field without opening a dialog. Snapshot and history exports apply to the selected PV; sessions include every open PV. A read-only session shows a Read only badge beside the entry field.

Tools → Open in QtStripTool (Ctrl+T) plots the selected table rows, or the PV in the inspector, in QtStripTool. QtProbe writes a small configuration with each PV's name, units, display range and precision to its cache folder and starts QtStripTool with it; only the newest 20 of these files are kept. QtStripTool plots up to ten Channel Access PVs; PVA PVs, PVs beyond ten and names longer than 63 bytes are skipped with a note in the status bar. QtProbe looks for QTPROBE_STRIPTOOL, then qtstriptool beside qtprobe, then on PATH, then in a sibling StripTool build tree.