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Al.B

Create a TestStand context help pane

Status: New

When using the TestStand API, I always find myself switching back and forth between TestStand and the TestStand reference help.  While the intellisense function help is usually enough, many times I like seeing the more detailed information in the help.  I would really like to have the option of displaying context specific help in a TestStand pane, similar to the context help window in LabVIEW.

 

This pane could dynamically update to display function information when using expressions, or show general information about the active pane or dialog (for newer users).  Much of the linking for the second case is already done, since the F1 key will pull up relevant help for the active pane currently.

 

TestStand context help pane.png

Al B.
Staff Software Engineer - TestStand
CTA/CLD
1 Comment
warren_scott
Active Participant

One of the problems we keep running into is how to implement help for our custom types (more for custom step types).

Example: we create a bunch of custom step types, and users insert instances of them, but how do they find out the best way to use them.  Default comments kinda work, but unless you are diligent about deleting them you have a very messy sequence file.  Custom edit substeps help with this (either as a 'only ever interact wiht the step through the custom edit substep', but that does not work well for managing preconditions, preexpressions, postactions, etc; OR as a 'custom edit substep pops up help dialog window' that makes a mess of reading and editing because of modal requirements)

If there were a way to allow the help window to have custom help information about custom step types when we are editing the instances of our custom step types, that would make this substantially more useful