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Lutzi

display captions in arrays

Status: New

I have often the case, that i have to display an array of cluster. It takes a lot of space on the front panel to show all the captions of the cluster elements, cause they will be shown on each array element. A better solution would be, showing the captions or labels just on the top visible element.

IMAG000.jpg

IMAG001.jpg

11 Comments
GregSands
Active Participant
And alternatively to the left of a vertically-oriented cluster. The labels should also stay in place when scrolling, as a header, which would be closer to a multi-column text box that does more than text.
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

I can see value in the original suggestion from Lutzi. The modification from GregS about vertically-oriented clusters, not so much, as the labels being on the sides of objects is pretty weird, and the vertical height lost in a vertical cluster isn't as big a problem as for a horizontal, in my opinion.

 

GregS's fixed-header-while-you-scroll idea seems like a good addition.

 

I'll put my kudos on this idea.

GregSands
Active Participant
Labels on the side are weird? Hmm, I always knew my arrays were a little loopy. I find I use cluster arrays both ways, depending on what's the most useful for scanning the data. But allowing them on top would be a good start.
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

For some very limited cases, like a list of integer values with names like "A" and "B", it works. But for complex clusters where elements are various sizes and labels are various lengths, yeah, I'll stand by "weird". Those side labels create huge amounts of wasted whitespace under the labels. They have to be right aligned or the short ones end up far away from the thing they are labeling. Aesthetically, it always looks to me like the right side of my screen should tip over and flip the left side high into the air. It's unbalanced visually.

 

It gets weirder when there are nested clusters.

 

If there is enough space to turn the labels vertical, sometimes I'm ok with that, but that's generally limited to the cases where the vertical length of the string is smaller than the vertical height of the thing it is labeling.

Yamaeda
Proven Zealot

If you expand an array of clusters to the side instead of downwards the labels need to go to the left, yes. That's what typically happens if the cluster is mostly vertical.

/Y

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Qestit Systems
Certified-LabVIEW-Developer
Lutzi
Member

here you can imagine a example of a horizontal array.

array horizontal.jpg

AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

Ah. That's why pictures are so key. The vision in my head was the same thing but with vertical scrolling. I very very rarely use horizontal scrolling for arrays... but your picture showing the horizontal scrolling seems kind of nice. I can see the utility.

 

This is what was in my head:

Untitled.png

GregSands
Active Participant
Thanks for the picture Lutzi, that's exactly what I had in mind.
Soana-Phikeste
Member
ZX81
Member

I agree, and would like to see the change implemented.  For now, I've been using one of two less attractive solutions:

 

1. Turn on both caption and label (or just caption), and re-type the column headers as a caption for the array.  I have to space it out just right to look fairly good, but the labels don't always line up well.  When I do that for Data Types, I commonly miss one or two uses of the data type, so those indicators look wrong (I mean cases where the cluster is a Data Type, and the array isn't, but both apply).

 

2. Use a multi-column display instead.  That works for horizontal or vertical clusters.  But it usually isn't as attractive, especially if I want to mix boolean or color displays with numbers/text.  And it is quite a bit more trouble to use as a control.

 

I would suggest one tiny change, though.  Instead of a check-box for 'caption of 1st visible element', use a check-box for 'hide labels after first element'.  It's minor, but sometimes I don't want the caption or label on one element at all.  For example, I sometimes have a color box behind all the other elements [yes, I know one should never stack controls, but it looks great and the slow-down isn't that bad], so I can control the background for a cluster differently in each element of the array; I don't want that color box's caption or label visible even on the first element.

 

There may be one fly in the ointment:  How do you manage the cluster's size?  It can automatically expand to include labels if the cluster is auto-arranging (which doesn't line up well on vertical).  But it may be more programming trouble for NI to expand other clusters automatically.

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