Front panel controls and indicators should be genuine after being replaced with control or indicator of different style

[Petru_Tarabuta]

The front panel below contains a modern-style string control and a classic-style string control.

We may want to replace the modern-style control with a classic-style control (for example if the team style guidelines recommend classic-style controls for non-user-facing front panels, or just for consistency).

The problem is that after right-clicking the modern-style control and selecting Replace >> Classic >> String Control, the control is replaced with something that looks different from an original, genuine classic string control. This is shown below. The new control looks like a hybrid between classic and modern. The same behaviour occurs when using QuickDrop to replace the control (Ctrl+Space, Ctrl+P).

My suggestion is: Controls and indicators should be replaced by genuine-looking items, not by hybrids that preserve some attributes of the old style, and some of the new.

Thanks

[fabric]

Yes, I agree there is deinitely an issue here.

While there may be times when the user wishes to retain the style (size, colour, display format, ...) of the original control as much as possible, there are plenty of situations where I would prefer to use the style of the new control.

Another good example is replacing a control with an existing (non-strict) typedef from disk. In this case I almost always want to use the default style of the new typedef. In practice what I typically get is an odd looking frankenstein control.

My proposal would be to have a modifier on the paste/replace operation to "force" the new style rather than retaining any old style.

[leahmedwards]

Well spotted Petru, that is very strange behaviour! I wonder how many types and styles of front panel object are affected, apart from String Control.

A related idea which might be helpful is if the style of the front panel object (e.g. control/indicator) showed up in the front panel object's properties e.g. under right click>Properties. I thought about this in the past and was very surprised when I discovered there was no way of doing this (thread I made).

I can't seem to find a related Ideas Exchange post, so might write it up as another idea. I need to think about how XControls would display though...

Edit: I have now posted the idea Front Panel Object's Style is shown under its properties, cheers for sparking this idea!

[Petru_Tarabuta]

Thanks, Leah. I agree with your idea, and gave it my kudos.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

LabVIEW has two different ways to do replace. The menus preserve attributes; the copy/paste does not.

To get the behavior you request, drop the control then do cut (ctrl+x on Windows). Select the existing control and do paste (ctrl+v on Windows). That will replace everything.

> My suggestion is: Controls and indicators should be replaced by genuine-looking items, not

> by hybrids that preserve some attributes of the old style, and some of the new.

LabVIEW *used* to work like this idea requests, and many people complained that LabVIEW didn't preserve enough attributes when replacing with other items from the palette. So we changed it. Then people complained the other direction. And that is why LV has two different behaviors for replace. Both behaviors are needed.

I am going to recommend we decline this idea. HOWEVER, if you have a proposal for how better to support both use cases, please file it as a new idea. We've kicked around various ideas over time. The current model is not good because it isn't discoverable (otherwise you would already know about it), but models that just involve different keyboard shortcuts all suffer the same undiscoverability problem. It's been about 10 years since we last looked at this, and there are likely some better ideas out there for different types of paste. Recommend one that you like and we'll see how it goes.

[Petru_Tarabuta]

Thanks AristosQueue. I wasn't aware of the Ctrl-X + Ctrl-V method. I have just tried it. It works well and I will continue using it.

I fully agree that some users (myself included) will sometimes prefer attributes to be preserved. In fact a majority of users may prefer for the attributes to be preserved most of the time.

Sticking with the example in the post above, a more intuitive solution could be: After right clicking the modern string control and selecting "Replace >> Classic >> String Control" from the menu, a two button dialogue message could popup. The message could ask something like "Preserve attributes?" The buttons' Boolean text would be "Yes" and "No".

This would:
1. Enable the user to select either functionality, depending on their use case. (the same user may prefer either behaviour at different times)

2. Make it obvious that two behaviours are available

[AristosQueue (NI)]

@petru If you like that solution, please post it as a new idea. There are several variations for solving this "multiple ways of replacing" problem and kudos could potentially help vote among them.

[Petru_Tarabuta]

Thanks AristosQueue. I posted it as a new idea: When replacing front panel objects user should be given option to preserve attributes or not  

[Christina_R]

Rather than losing the "replace and preserve attributes" command, we'd like to see ideas for how we can better support both types of replace.