Cosmetic suggestions

[johnsold]

Before I submit these ideas to the Product Suggestion site, I would like some feedback. I can find out whether my ideas are crazy, whether I have overlooked some easy way of accomplishing these things, or whether the ideas can be refined or improved.

None of these is necessary to make things work, but they would make it much easier for those of us who spend too much time trying to make everything line up, look nice, and be neatly presented.

1. Recent versions of LV indicate the coordinates of the BD window relative to the origin when moving the scroll bars. The FP does not have this option. If the thickened axis grid lines are off screen, you have no idea which way to scroll to return to the origin. FP Property Nodes exist for Panel Bounds and Window Bounds, but no such properties seem to be available for the BD.

My suggestions: 1.a. Show displacement from origin when moving FP scroll bars the same as on BD.
1.b. Provide a means to return either FP or BD to origin with a menu, VI property, or other mechanism which does not require tedious 2D scrolling.
1.c. Regardless of position of objects on FP or BD, allow scrolling toward origin.

2. Make controls and indicators default sizes match the default grid size on the FP. This would make aligning things at multiple edges easier. This could be a new set of controls to avoid breaking existing panels. We have Modern, Classic, and System. The new ones could be "Nit-Picky".

3. Make the default alignment of the digits in numerical controls and indicators Right Justified. This may need to be local sensitive. In United States English numbers are typically written as right justified. Having the controls default to left justified means several additional steps are required to make things look professional. I know I can create custom controls, but you cannot select those for creation from a wire or VI output terminal on the block diagram. At least make it possible for the developer to change the default.

Thanks,

Lynn

[amcolosk]

johnsold,

I completely agree with your first two points.  I have gotten lost on the front pannel, and it get's tough to find the origin sometimes.  It is also tough to get clusters or arrays to line up next to each other when the controls are different sizes.  The only way I have figured out to do that is to turn the grid off and manually guess at the right size.

Personally I'm not picky on the right justified, but it is a good idea.

[altenbach]

johnsold wrote:
3. Make the default alignment of the digits in numerical controls and indicators Right Justified. This may need to be local sensitive. In United States English numbers are typically written as right justified. Having the controls default to left justified means several additional steps are required to make things look professional.

I right-justify for integers and if I use a format with a fixed number of decimal points. The default format is "automatic" with 6 significant digits. Here, the justification is not as important.

I agree that right-justification would be a better default. I typically change it for code that I distribute.

While we're at it, I would also like it if hex and binary formats would (by default) pad with zeroes on the left with a field size correct according to the representation. (e.g. %04x for U16, %08b for U8, etc. If I want to see hex or binary, I want to see all relevant digits!

[Ray.R]

I like your suggestions Lynn.

You do realize that evolution depends on crazy ideas.. 

What I hate is plcing items on the block diagram and having to hunt for them on the Front Panel.  Especially code that's been copied from another VI.

Or... some sort of feature to bring all FP objects closer.  This is often the case debugging other people's code where they hide everything all over the place on the Front Panel.  A feature to bring the closer (not necessarily up close & personal), but not 3 screens to the left, 5 screens to the right, 3 screens above and one screen below.

DC..  hope you read these threads...

[johnsold]

Christian,

I had forgotten about the binary and hex formats. Those will be added to my list.

Ray,

I wonder if keeping the FP and BD both near the origin will help with the placement? I think I have observed, but have not verified, that placement correlates with position on the other panel. Position on the BD may not correlate well with where it should be on the FP, but that seems to be the way it is now done.

Would it work to have new controls placed just below (or to the right of) the lowest (rightmost) current control? It is not where we would place it finally in most cases, but at least would be easy to find.

Lynn

[JeffOverton]

I really like the binary and hex format idea, but for right justification, why not do something like this?  Just drop it on your block diagram every so often and set everything up.

edit - oops, might help if I set up the case structure properly

Message Edited by JeffOverton on 05-30-2008 02:43 PM

[johnsold]

I had not thought of programmatically setting the justification. Thanks for the suggestion.

Lynn

[JeffOverton]

No problem.  I ordinarily have some controls that are initialized hidden and can be revealed programmatically, so it's a hassle to find them on the block diagram, reveal them, edit something, and re-hide them, so I got used to the "show all" subvi a while back.

[altenbach]

Don't forget that if you want to keep the default format and just do a plain justification,

you can select multiple (or all!) FP elements and do a global justification.

Message Edited by altenbach on 05-30-2008 12:27 PM

[johnsold]

True, but that also changes the justification of the text in the labels/captions as well as the numeric parts.

Lynn