Hi Wolfgang,
When I first open the Edit dialog, the cell's data type is int64 and the range is (-9223372036854775808, 9223372036854775807). Those happen to be the largest possible values that an int64 can hold, and they are probably there because they were coerced down from the default double range (-Inf,+Inf), in a previous editing session.
You then changed the data type to char, which changes the range to (-128,127), which is the coerced range of a char . But the dialog still remembers that your initial preference was (-9223372036854775808, 9223372036854775807), and so, when you then change the data type to double, in that same editing session, it restores this range again, since it is now valid for the new data type. Except that it displays it in scientific notation, since doubles automatically use this notation when the exponent goes above a certain size.
It looks as if you then tried to coerce it back to the largest possible range of a double by typing 1e1000. This is a reasonable assumption on your part, but unfortunately it is a limitation of CVI that it cannot coerce a double entered in scientific notation -- it doesn't recognize 1e1000 as a valid number. Therefore, it keeps whatever value was in the control beforehand. If you had typed 1e308 instead, it would have worked, since that is a valid number. I recognize that it is very inconvenient for you to "guess" what the maximum number might be, so that you can enter it. All I can say is that if you really want to enter the highest possible double value in the max/min controls, you should enter "-Inf" and "+Inf" instead.
Luis
Given what I wrote above, the following shouldn't happen (and I wasn't able to reproduce it): "It behaves better if instead of -1e1000 you first type -100. If you then enter -1e1000 it will correct the number to -1.0E+300". It should leave -100 in the control.
