The usual question which comes with suggestions like this is "what do you do if the wire doesn't have a clear source?", like the marked wire in this example:
You could start suggesting all kinds of solutions, such as "you can do X" or "you can do this only when there's a clear source and it will cover at least some of the cases", and maybe that will indeed be better, but it's certainly easier to start with an empty string, as that gives a clear predictable behavior.
I'm not saying the idea is bad. It certainly has some appeal, but I'm not sure I would want NI to spend time on working out all the corner cases or even on just writing the code to figure out that the specific wire matches the apparently simple case in your example.
Ya true, in the above case it should take the indicator Label. If the source is not clear then let it be Void.
Even think of this case, where i need to label multiple wires. Now this option allows to select all wires -> label will makes its very simple and edit only few if required.
This Ensures better style and documentation of VIs.
@sandyy wrote: Ya true, in the above case it should take the indicator Label
It's just as easy to construct a case where there are multiple sinks to the wire and then you can't just say "take the indicator label". My point was that I don't want NI spending time on figuring that out and writing that code.
As for your second example, now there's suddenly even more magic in there - The wire labels somehow gained the brackets and the wires which have an uninitialized shift register as a source somehow know that they should take the labels from other wires in the loop.
If you think the logic for this is simple, you can try writing a Quick Drop shortcut which will do this - for all selected elements which are wires, go find their ultimate source and take its label and apply it to the wire. I think if you try that you'll appreciate why I don't want NI to spend time on this. You might also find that the tool you wrote works well enough for you and you can use it right now without having to wait for NI.
Any wire already has a well defined suggested name, it is whatever indicator name you get if you "right-click...create indicator". There is no need to discuss complicated cases, because everything could be already handled this way.
All we need is the following:
If we right-click a wire and show the label, it should start out with the default label as defined in my first sentence, but the entire label text should be selected so we can overwrite immediately by starting to type or we can just click and edit or accept the name. Voila!
Here is an example of names you would get with this suggestion. Seems reasonable!
I very much like the idea of filling in the wire name on the label. Including Altenbach's remarks.
One question for the general public: Do you color the labels?
I always give the label a frame with the same color as the wire. It just seems clearer to me that the label belong to the wire, and is not generic comment. Does anyone else do that as well? If this is common, it could be made default. (maybe set in preferences...)
