tools_ui

tools_ui #

Clicking the Fx toolbar button opens a tabbed panel collecting the toolkit's larger tool UIs — the mappers, hotstrings, palette editors and friends. Right-clicking a tab opens the owning tool's parameters (very important for midi/oscMapper configuration). Tabs can be re-ordered by drag-and-drop, and closed with their ✕ button (closing a tab switches the tool's UI Tab toggle off; re-enable it on the tool's parameters to bring the tab back). Tab order and the active tab roam with your config.

Tabs are discovered, not hardcoded: tools_ui sweeps its sibling tools for a UI Tab parameter page and builds exactly the tabs of the tools you have installed. Installing or removing tools never leaves dead tabs — the panel rebuilds on startup and every time it opens.

Contributing a tab #

Any depth-1 COMP next to tools_ui can contribute a tab by carrying a UI Tab section on its Registry parameter page (a Uitabsection header plus these parameters — the same page that hosts the registry sections like Cf*/Tb*):

Parameter	Meaning
Uitab (toggle)	contribute a tab at all
Uitablabel (str)	tab label; empty = the COMP's name
Uitaborder (int)	default ordering (user re-ordering wins)
Uitabpanel (str)	what the tab shows — see below

Uitabpanel accepts three forms:

• empty — the tool root itself is the tab's panel (it must be a panel COMP; tools_ui wires it in as a panel child).
• ./somePath — a DAT/CHOP/TOP inside the tool, shown through a viewer (the SearchWords table works this way).
• params:<pages> — a parameter view of the tool root scoped to the named custom pages, e.g. params:Families Colors (bare params: shows all pages). The ColorUI tab works this way.

A tool that also wants a refresh on show simply carries a Refresh pulse parameter — tools_ui pulses it by capability, never by name.