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LithosAnanake/evidence/amd64/qemu-screenshot-20260811-210852-4.4q-scrollback-C-restored.png
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Robert Allan JamesandClaude Sonnet 5 1f3ec3554e starkernel: REPL scrollback, ~1000 lines (FABRIC.md item 4.4q)
Scope decided with Captain Bob before implementation: ring buffer +
recall on today's full-screen vt100 grid, not also confining REPL text
to the 4.4o 640x480 box (that confinement stays open as its own future
item, not a third silent deferral). No keyboard input path exists yet
(M8 unstarted), so the trigger is two new FORTH words, SCROLL-BACK
( n -- ) / SCROLL-FWD ( n -- ), exercised via serial injection.

vt100.c gains a text-only 1000-line ring buffer (kmalloc'd, tens of KB
-- not pixel snapshots, which would be ~1000x larger for no benefit)
plus a shadow buffer mirroring the current screen. scroll_up() now
pushes evicted rows into the ring before the pixel scroll. History is
one continuous sequence (ring then shadow); scrolling always redraws
from that sequence -- no separate pixel-scroll path for scrollback,
decided up front to avoid retrofitting later.

New src/word_source/scroll_words.c (Module 31), thin wrappers over
console_fb_scroll_back()/_fwd() -> vt100_scroll_back()/_fwd(). Bug
caught during live testing: both words initially used an off-by-one
underflow check (dsp < 1) copied from a different, older dsp
convention elsewhere in this codebase; vm_pop() (which these words
actually call) uses dsp as a 0-based top-of-stack index, so the check
rejected every legitimate single-argument call. Fixed by removing the
separate precheck and relying on vm_pop()'s own guard.

Live-verified on all three architectures (exceeds this item's
amd64-minimum bar): generated 50+ lines via a FORTH loop, confirmed
SCROLL-BACK recovers correctly older content, and on amd64 confirmed
SCROLL-FWD returns to genuinely live state (not a frozen snapshot) by
showing the injected commands' own echo. Known limitation confirmed by
direct pixel measurement: redrawn lines lose their original SGR color
(not stored per-cell) -- text recovers exactly, color does not.

Three-arch verified: Failed: 0, dict-hashes identical across all
three (values changed correctly from prior items -- two new words
were added).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 21:23:25 -04:00

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