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NI TestStand Idea Exchange

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Kracken

Allow Users to Change Font Colors for Steps in the Sequence Editor

Status: New

It would be helpful to be able to change the font colors that are displayed for steps in the sequence editor.  This would allow users to identify steps quicker for more efficient editing and debugging.

 

StepColors.PNG

9 Comments
RayFarmer
Trusted Enthusiast

You can already change the colours in the Step Configuration List, but I guess you just want to change one or a selection rather that every line.

Maybe you could try creating new configuration, such as an option to switch off all comments to declutter the Sequence View.

 

Regards Ray Farmer

Regards
Ray Farmer
rimfire44
Member

This is a great idea. I'd like to see this go one step farther. I often forget that I have set a step to skip while debugging. It would be really handy to have the background of a step change to a highlighted color automatically when a step is skipped.

RayFarmer
Trusted Enthusiast

@rimfire44, now that is a good idea, it's sometime easy to miss skipped steps so being able to just make them standout would help.

Regards
Ray Farmer
asbo
Member

The Step Configuration list is perfect for what rimfire44 wants to do. In fact, there was an idea some time ago where I posted a screenshot of it.

 

Edit: I think the spirit of this idea falls in quite nicely with Step highlighting or tagging. 

Chris_K.
Member

It would be nice if skipped steps could be displayed in grey, similar to disabled code in LabVIEW. That way you can visually see what steps will be executed. I also would like to be able to insert blank lines to make the sequences more readable - kind of like text based programming languages.

dug9000
NI Employee (retired)

You can make skipped steps dimmed using the step list settings configuration dialog. It's not straightforward, but it's doable. You can insert blank lines using the label step type or by putting carriage returns in a comment. The label step type has an option to not show any icon, name, or status, thus creating a blank line.

Chris_K.
Member

Thanks for the info. Do you have more detail on how to grey out specific steps only? For example, is there an expression I can paste into the formula box for Step Text Color? Something like (if step.run mode == skip, then color = grey)? I found I can edit the step list settings configuration to use a "disabled color" for the text, but it gets applied to all steps.

dug9000
NI Employee (retired)

Use the following expression for the text color:

 

Step.TS.Mode == "Skip" ? tsGray : (Step.TS.Mode == "Pass" ? tsDarkGreen : (Step.TS.Mode == "Fail" ? tsRed : tsBlack))

 

For the execution view, if you also want to make steps grey that were skipped for other reasons, you can set the execution view version of the expression to:

 

(Step.TS.Mode == "Skip" || Step.Result.Status == "Skipped") ? tsGray : (Step.TS.Mode == "Pass" ? tsDarkGreen : (Step.TS.Mode == "Fail" ? tsRed : tsBlack))

 

Hope this helps,

-Doug

Everseeker
Member

Bumping (Yeah, from 2011... But still marked as "New") Because I need roughly the same thing..

 

(Sr. Dev wants me to "Highlight all changed lines for my review"..... HOW???)