Probe basic—Help with a few issues

I changed from Gmoccapy to probe basic several months ago. I do like a lot of the functionality and the ease of use…there are a couple things that really annoy me and I would love to figure out how to change.
   One being that I use the arrow keys to jog and any time I’m not clicked onto the “man” button, the left and right arrow keys scroll through the tabs of probe basic instead of jogging the x axis of the machine. Is it possible to set the left and right keys to jog only and eliminate this issue?
   Another is the file page. It’s great being able to move files inside the gui but I’ve not been able to figure out how to move entire folders or multiples files at once. So I have to create a new folder on the hard drive, re name it, and move each file individually to the hard drive every time I make a change to my file tree. Am I missing something here?
    Lastly is it possible to eliminate the 8 “info” windows that pop up when you probe a hole? Or just turn these info windows off completely?? 
   Thanks ahead of time I would really appreciate help making these quality of life improvements! Thanks, Andy 

The 3 modes of operation (Manual, Auto, and Manual Data Input (MDI)) and jogging in manual only are a core principle of linuxcnc operation, see there docs
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/user/user-intro.h...:modes-of-operations
so although PB might be able to stop the tab selection changing when not in manual, jogging would still not be allowed in Auto or MDI


The Debug windows on probing are due to an older copy of the `probe_` subroutines
depending on how you installed PB,

update PB then copying across the updates files from
~/linuxcnc/configs/probe_basic/subroutines/

or go download that latest ones from GitHub
github.com/kcjengr/probe_basic/tree/main...be_basic/subroutines

Ok thanks, I hear what your saying on the man, auto, and mdi mode…I just double checked and I misspoke when I wrote that out. I should have said when I click on a tab such as “file” or “tool” I then have to click on the “man” button again even though it is already highlighted and in manual mode in order to jog the x axis, otherwise it toggles through the tabs. I often forget to do this and spend several seconds trying to jog and then remember I have to click the “man” button again in order to jog. It’s kind of like I have to “click out” of the tabs to get back to being able to jog. I hope that makes sense! Also I will grab those new subroutines to fix that issue. Thanks!

yes keyboard jogging needs the cursor focus to be on the main window or say not taken back a specific widget, dialog, input box etc

if you focused into an input box like the file manager or say editing a tool description then you do not want the machine to suddenly jog when your trying to just move the cursor left to fix that typo in "ednmill"

I would also suggest making the buttons appear in-active when not in manual mode.

Mayberry Customs post=286659 userid=27042Ok thanks, I hear what your saying on the man, auto, and mdi mode…I just double checked and I misspoke when I wrote that out. I should have said when I click on a tab such as “file” or “tool” I then have to click on the “man” button again even though it is already highlighted and in manual mode in order to jog the x axis, otherwise it toggles through the tabs. I often forget to do this and spend several seconds trying to jog and then remember I have to click the “man” button again in order to jog. It’s kind of like I have to “click out” of the tabs to get back to being able to jog. I hope that makes sense! Also I will grab those new subroutines to fix that issue. Thanks!

is this after loading a program? if so that is because program load changes to auto mode.  

as stated above the debug messages for probing have been gone for a while they were remnants from when the routines were written and for test purposes.  update the subroutines and that should resolve, be sure to check any custom subroutines you have altered against the new ones to make sure there are no surprises and of course always back up!

I don't use the screen jog keys much and never noticed the jog buttons scrolled through the tabs.. interesting.  disabling the jog keys unless in manual mode is a great suggestion! will have a look at that and try and remove the tab scroll feature also.

EDIT: i cannot get the jog arrow keys to scroll the tabs?  can you tell me how to reproduce?

EDIT: are you referring to the keyboard arrows?  if so that may be in keybinding and i would say is a personal preference you would need to set locally
 

Yes I am referring to the arrow keys on the keyboard…can you point me to a post or info about modifying the key binding for this?

Another issue I have is that the “cone” that represents the tool does not follow the toolpath displayed in the gui…the tool path works correctly and the work coordinates correlates to the location of the toolpath correctly, but the representative cone just kind of moves around out in space on the screen not following the graphical tool path…is this a known issue as well?

Not that i am aware of, i do not see any of this behavior, do you have any offsets set? maybe take a shot of your offsets page or try clearing the offsets, then setting a new wcs then load the program? 

 

Mayberry wrote:

Yes I am referring to the arrow keys on the keyboard…can you point me to a post or info about modifying the key binding for this?
 

i have not played with that myself, just know it is something others have used for such things, you will need to find someone who has posted about it maybe to help there.

Lcvette wrote:

Mayberry wrote:

Yes I am referring to the arrow keys on the keyboard…can you point me to a post or info about modifying the key binding for this?
 
i have not played with that myself, just know it is something others have used for such things, you will need to find someone who has posted about it maybe to help there.

OP - A few of us have been discussing keyboard controls lately, both in PB and LCNC in general.

Specific to PB & QtPyVCP, this was the most promising post I've seen recently:

forum.linuxcnc.org/qtpyvcp/47976-probe-b...ging?start=10#286244

If you are capable of editing python files you can probably accomplish what you want. (keyboard jog - yes, keyboard screen tabs - no)

Failing that, I think the next step is to raise an issue on GitHub so we can all figure out how to add a way to manage keyboard controls more easily.  I'm thinking checkbox(s) on a settings page... not user-editing some python gibberish.

It may take some significant work as there are keybinding functions throughout the various GUI's.  Given what little I can comprehend QtPyVCP appears to be based on qtvcp - or at least uses some libraries or other components (I don't know the jargon, forgive me).  When I see stuff like this:

in QtPyVCP base_widget.py, it makes me think there was some code-sharing at some point.  So maybe a solid fix means work both in Qtvcp and QtPyVCP.

Nor do I know what the end scheme would look like.  Maybe a new widget which will override all keybinding or key events?  Or will any change/feature need to be added to each particular GUI - and not just the GUI framework application.