Opt out permanently from "maintain wires connected"

[Herbert]

Please let me opt out from this new feature, introduced in LabVIEW 2017, permanently in the setup dialog.

Using LabVIEW for a very long time (since LabVIEW 2.0), I never wished such a feature (it got only 27 Kudoes) - and - I am even using it's "anti feature", implemented up to now, constructively to detach objects (Pull control into a structure, connect it to the new target - and "Ctrl B").

This new feature, forced onto everybody, would be less annoying, if pressing "W" would reliably disable the feature. However,  at least in vritual windows machines (Parallels) on a Mac, it does not work 50% of the time.

[Manzolli]

@MichaelBalzer: I think it would be more natural using W only when I want to keep the connections. Kudos 4 U!

[Cepera]

Kudos @MichaelBalzer!

[dadreamer]

MichaelBalzer

Great finding! That ini key does its job. I wonder how did you discover it? Boths Google and NI forums show me nothing, if I try to search something about that key.

Your AHK script is very handy also as I often need to browse through the big diagrams and the fast scrolling ability helps a lot. But I found small bug there - having the script activated I left-click on the scrollbar (no matter, vertical or horizontal) and try to drag, it starts to move and then stops ("unclicks"), so I have to repeat the whole thing again. Maybe I even won't need to do this as the fast scrolling offers the better way, but it's always good to have all the parts working together, if possible. Moreover, sending W key doesn't work when the keyboard layout is switched to non-English language (as I wrote above), but it's likely an issue to LabVIEW engine, not to the script.

[MichaelBalzer]

A magician never reveals his secrets!

Spoiler

But I'm not a magician, so...

The key LiveDrag was mentioned in this thread about disabling live code updates while dragging code around. I had a hunch that other keys must exist to tweak other dragging behaviour. So I opened LabVIEW.exe in my trusty text editor, did a search for LiveDrag, and noticed a few bytes after that was another key called DragAutoWire. It sounded like it applied to this particular problem, so I added it to labview.ini and sure enough it worked.

The illusion isn't as exciting when you know how it's done.

Thanks for the script feedback, I'll see what I can do. I typically use the middle-mouse to pan around, so admittedly didn't test the scrollbars. As a workaround you can hover the mouse over the scrollbar and use the scroll wheel to move it either up/down or left/right.

To everyone, please keep kudoing this idea. There's a good chance the labview.ini key to disable this will be removed in a future version. Consider it a temporary workaround.

[dadreamer]

MichaelBalzer

This definitely wouldn't occur to me to open labview.exe in text editor I was almost completely sure, such a key doesn't exist as nobody of R&D staff has ever mentioned it in the discussions. Wish long live for this key in the next versions.

By the way I've found another bug in the script, that made me stop using it until it gets fixed. It's related to text editing on BD. When I try to select some text in a string constant or in Case structure selector with mouse, it replaces the selected part to "w" symbol, so I'm forced to use keyboard only to work with the text. Sadly it's more critical to me than the previous issue, so I (temporary?) disabled the script.

[wiebe@CARYA]

>This definitely wouldn't occur to me to open labview.exe in text editor

That does violate the LabVIEW license (reverse engineering is prohibited, IIRC). So it never occurred to me either .

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> This definitely wouldn't occur to me to open labview.exe in text editor

You never had a time in your life when you opened every .exe in a text editor/decompiler to see what you could unravel? Best way to learn how a computer works, in my experience (and that of many of my high school friends). How else do you turn off the copy protections? (You know, back before you realized that your own paycheck depended upon respect for copyright and you should probably pay for your tools. 🙂  How else did you write a script to pin your health to maximum in games? (You know, back when games weren't multiplayer and this became cheating.)

Take apart a VI... figure out the file format.* Open a .docx file... see if you can figure out how fonts are encoded. Look at any .settings or .ini or similar and see what happens if you flip some values. Almost all software has unpublished features of varying utility. Just think twice about using such settings in LabVIEW in your official work... many of them are poorly tested or unmaintained and may cause wonkiness.

* Unless this contradicts EULAs and/or laws governing your cyber/meat spaces. Or you are confident in your lawyers' abilities. Or your own hacker skillz. 😉

[wiebe@CARYA]

I prefer a debugger for serious hacking. When it's allowed, of course.

For a .docx, I'd recommend to first rename it to .zip. Of course .docx is an open specification... Kinda spoils the fun.

[Porter]

This feature should only be turned on while pressing the W key (or some other key combination).

Otherwise it is just annoying.

[pawel]

The "w" trick worked to switch of that feature. 

thank you