Show Reentrancy in Context Help

[Mr._Jim]

Hi all,

What I'm asking for is an optional indication of reentrancy in the context help window.

This would save the user from having to open VI Properties on several VIs, and would be particularly useful when viewing the VI hierarchy.

I realize that Greg Freeman suggested something similar.  My intent here is to narrow down several ideas from that conversation down to a single suggestion.

(I hope I still didn't manage to post a duplicate. Apologies if I did.)

Thanks,

Jim

[SteenSchmidt]

How about something like this? Or this?

/Steen

[Mr._Jim]

Hmm...  While neither of those are bad ideas, all I'm really looking for is the context help indicator.

Really what I'd like to be able to do is easily catch VIs that I forgot to make reentrant before I start debugging the application.  I'd like to be able to mouse over my VIs in Project Explorer or the VI Hierarchy window and quickly assess the reentrancy of a call chain.  If, after doing this, I find that I misconfigured one or two VIs, it's not a big deal to open up VI properties and remedy the situation.  Configuring the reentrancy from the icon or a special context menu is not really a priority for me.

[SteenSchmidt]

Acknowledged. I just find that there is way too much mouse clicking 

going on in LabVIEW.

/Steen

[Mr._Jim]

Just sayin'... best of luck getting maximum kudos votes on your ideas, though.

[SteenSchmidt]

Let me put it another way - getting the reentrancy info in the context help window is just one arbitrary piece of information. There are so many configuration items on a VI that I wouldn't want to see all of them poluting the context help.

/Steen

[fabric]

I'd certainly like reentrancy mentioned in the context help... for a start. (I recall AQ hinting that the context help window might be on the verge of a makeover)

Context help would be a good start, but IMO it would be far more useful to have access to this infomation in bulk, directly from the project, as per this excellent idea: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Project-View-Enhancement-Show-more-VI-Properties/idi-p... 

[Mr._Jim]

Hey, I definitely agree that it is just one arbitrary piece of information.  I did think of that when I made this request, but I'd also seen other requests for various implementations of more detailed, customizable context help.  (Which would of course be better, but in apparent lieu of that...)

Fabric, I certainly hope the rumors are true from that other thread you referenced.  Those posts are aging, and one can only hope that development has long since begun toward that end.  I guess I'm not on here often enough, listening to the rumor mill.

[GregFreeman]

I was wondering why my idea was getting resurrected via Kudos; now I know! I think somewhere someone mentioned having what shows up in context help for particular VIs be configurable. Maybe you could have your default environment configuration for what is shown and on a per VI basis modify these things if needed. The problem with it being on a per VI basis is that what one person may want to see another may not care about. Embedding these properties in the VIs themselves could really confuse people due to lack of consistency with regards to what is shown, in my opinion. Maybe what is shown should just be an environment setting after all. Forgive me for "thinking outloud" here.

[drjdpowell]

Why is this, or something like this, not implemented yet?  If I were asked for the one idea with the highest return for effort it would be making the reentrancy of a vi obvious, either from context help or block-diagram window.  I disagree that reentrancy is an "arbitrary piece of information"; it is a critical thing that can change what the code does and so should be clearly visible, not hidden amongst a thousand minor properties.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

@drjdpowell: See comments from me here:

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/reentrant-VI-indicator/idc-p/3130825/highlight/true#M...

This has been discussed, repeatedly. It's clear that something should be done, but not clear that CH is the way to do it. Personally, I've been hoping that with all the user analysis going into LabVIEW NXG that they'd come up with some elegant solutions that we could backport into LabVIEW 20xx, but I haven't seen anything yet.