.. _MetaControls:

MetaControls
============

**class MetaControls(parent: Optional[QWidget] = None)**

Bases: :class:`~PySide6.QtWidgets.QWidget`

Shared base for the control panels that sit below each analysis tab's plot.

Every analysis tab owns a controls widget - ``ClusteringControls``,
``EventAnalysisControls``, ``MetadataControls``, ``ProteinControls`` and
``RawDataControls`` - which builds the tab's comboboxes, buttons and labels and
turns user interaction into signals the tab's View connects to. Those five
widgets were written by copy-paste and carried the same helpers verbatim; this
base holds the shared half so there is one copy to fix.

What a subclass inherits:

- **Widget factories.** :meth:`createLabel`, :meth:`create_comboBox` and
  :meth:`createButton` build the three plain widgets every panel uses, with the
  font, size policy and translation call applied consistently.
- **Icon buttons.** :meth:`create_info_button`, :meth:`create_add_button` and
  :meth:`create_delete_button` build the pencil, plus and trash buttons beside
  each plugin combobox, already wired to the signals below.
- **The placeholder guard.** :meth:`is_placeholder_item` and
  :meth:`toggle_info_button` keep a combobox's edit and delete buttons disabled
  until a real plugin is selected, reading the tab's own
  :attr:`placeholder_texts`.
- **Signals.** ``actionTriggered`` carries a request into the tab's Controller as
  ``(submodel_name, action_name, args)``. ``add_processed``, ``edit_processed``
  and ``delete_processed`` carry plugin-management requests, and are emitted for
  the metaclass whose combobox the user acted on.

What a subclass owes it:

- **Its own** ``logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)``. This base deliberately
  declares none, because every call in the family goes through ``self.logger``
  and resolves through the MRO - so a logger here would silently re-home every
  subclass's records to ``poriscope.utils.MetaControls``.
- **Its own** :attr:`placeholder_texts`, or the placeholder guard above will read
  every combobox entry as a real selection.
- ``setupUi``, ``connect_signals``, ``validate_inputs`` and ``collect_parameters``,
  which are genuinely per-tab and are called by the subclass's own ``__init__``.

Public Methods
--------------

Abstract Methods
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These methods must be implemented by subclasses.

(none)

Concrete Methods
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.createButton
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.createLabel
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.create_add_button
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.create_comboBox
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.create_delete_button
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.create_info_button
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.delete_plugin
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.is_placeholder_item
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.show_plugin_add_manager
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.show_plugin_edit_manager
.. automethod:: poriscope.utils.MetaControls.MetaControls.toggle_info_button

Private Methods
---------------

Abstract Methods
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These methods must be implemented by subclasses.

(none)