User Tabs

A user tab is your own page inside Probe Basic, laid out in Qt Designer. The same pattern is used for user buttons and user DRO displays.

Each one is a folder holding two files:

File	Whose	What it is
`<name>.ui`	Yours	The layout. Edit it in Qt Designer.
`<name>.py`	Ours	A small loader that finds and loads the `.ui`. Do not edit it.

Important

Edit the .ui in Qt Designer. Leave the .py alone. It is generic – it works out the .ui filename from its own name – so the same file works in every folder. If you modify it you are on your own, and a future Probe Basic update may overwrite it.

Everything a normal tab needs is available in Designer. Widgets such as ActionButton, MDIButton, HalButton and HalLabel are wired up entirely through their properties, with no Python at all.

Creating a User Tab

Point the INI at a folder that holds your tabs:

[DISPLAY]
USER_TABS_PATH = user_tabs/

Copy one of the shipped templates and rename it. The folder, the .py and the .ui must all share the same name:

user_tabs/
    shop_page/
        shop_page.py      <- copied from template_main.py, renamed
        shop_page.ui      <- copied from template_main.ui, renamed

Use template_main for a full page and template_sidebar for the narrow panel beside the plot.

Naming the Tab

Open the .ui in Designer and select the root widget – the top entry in the Object Inspector, not one of its children. Two of its properties control how the tab appears:

Property	Effect
`objectName`	The text shown on the tab. Underscores become spaces, so `SHOP_PAGE` shows as `SHOP PAGE`. The built-in tabs are uppercase, so use uppercase if you want yours to match.
`sidebar`	`false` puts the tab on the main tab strip. `true` puts it in the sidebar beside the plot. Only one sidebar tab can be loaded.

sidebar is a dynamic property, at the bottom of Designer’s property panel. The templates already have it set.

Upgrading From an Older Probe Basic

Your .ui files carry over untouched, including ones drawn in Qt 5 Designer on Debian 12. The loader .py files are the part that changes between releases.

The quickest fix by hand is to copy the current template into your folder and rename it to match. For a tab folder called shop_page:

cp /usr/share/configs/probe_basic/user_tabs/template_main/template_main.py \
   ~/linuxcnc/configs/probe_basic/user_tabs/shop_page/shop_page.py

Leave the .ui alone. Repeat for each folder.

Updating Several Folders at Once

If you have more than a couple of folders, there is a script that does the same thing across a whole config directory. It is not installed with Probe Basic – download it only if you want it:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kcjengr/probe_basic/pyside6/scripts/update_user_files.py

See what it would change, without changing anything:

python3 update_user_files.py --dry-run ~/linuxcnc/configs/probe_basic

Then run it for real:

python3 update_user_files.py ~/linuxcnc/configs/probe_basic

It refreshes the loader .py in every user tab, user button and user DRO folder it finds, keeps each previous file alongside as .py.bak, and never touches a .ui. Running it twice is harmless – the second run reports everything as already current.

It reads DISPLAY from your INI so a lathe config gets the lathe templates, and takes those templates from the configs installed in /usr/share/configs, which means it updates you to whatever Probe Basic version is installed.

When a Tab Does Not Appear

A user tab that cannot be loaded is skipped – the rest of Probe Basic starts normally – and the reason is written to the log file named by LOG_FILE in your INI. Common causes:

The folder, .py and .ui names do not match. All three must be the same.
No .py in the folder. A .ui on its own does not make a tab. Qt Designer only writes .ui files; the .py has to be copied from a template.
The .py imports PyQt. Probe Basic runs on PySide6. Anything importing PyQt directly is refused, because loading it would take down the whole application. Replace the loader with the current template (above), and rebuild any .qrc resources with pyside6-rcc rather than pyrcc5.