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JÞB

VI documentation Upgrade

Status: New
The VI>Properties>Vi documentation could use an overhaul.  Simpler access from the Menu (A ribbon button ?) Templates and Auto insertion of definable fields.  A real text editor launch and well how about being able to resize the edit box so you can see what you typed.   Cut-and Paste from notepad works - but can't we get a bit more elegant than that.  Type bold text - get Bold text Underline, italics.  Justify left center or right.  Heck- this editor for the Idea exchange would look great in my vi documentation pop-up.

"Should be" isn't "Is" -Jay
19 Comments
JB
Trusted Enthusiast
Trusted Enthusiast

What do you think about ONE tool to edit the VI icon and documentation ?

Spectre_Dave
Active Participant
I always used a custom tool to populate the VI Documentation because it is totally inadequate.
Visualize the Solution

CLA

LabVIEW, LabVIEW FPGA
JÞB
Knight of NI
@ the other JB.  I think that the two tools lack sufficient cohesion to combine into one.  I write my VI documentation BEFORE I open a new vi.  The time that the vi documentation is needed is well in advance of the icon.  and, frankly I'll edit the documentation more often than the icon

"Should be" isn't "Is" -Jay
Manzolli
Active Participant

Agree with JB. Both should be together. It will be great if we open both with a double click on the icon. Doesn't mater if you need to edit only one of then, just go and change what you need to change, just like in the control properties. We are talking here about VI documentation, and both are important for a good software development practice. What NI need to do is to add a new tab in the icon editor with the contents of VI Properties' Documentation items (The text fields "VI description", "Help tag", "Help path" and the button "Browse..."). It will be much faster to edit the documentation.

 

Jeff's idea can make people do better documentation and improve a lot Context Help's clarity. How about a toolbar with buttons to change font: bold, italic, underline, color, name, etc.

 

Kudos!
André Manzolli

Mechanical Engineer
Certified LabVIEW Developer - CLD
LabVIEW Champion
Curitiba - PR - Brazil
Jacc
Member

If NI is truly serious about documentation being a critical (or just even an imortant part) of LabView software development, then LabView needs a serious documentation editor. Documentation is one of the hardest things to get developers to do and the current LabView just make it incredibly painful.

 

By that, I mean an editor that is not a modal dialog box, and one that can select more than one VI to facilitate copying of docmentation for controls and the VI itself. Subvis typically have many of the same controls of the parent VI and they generally have the same Description and Tip - so make it eeasy to document. Spell checking and the other suggestions in this reguest would  be great, but please, make it EASY to do documentation.

BPerlman
Member

Yes yes yes yes yes.

 

The primitive (and too small) "editor" for the documentation is truly driving us crazy.

 

Yesterday we copied the text and went into Notepad to edit and copy and paste it back.  (Yes, even Notepad is massively better Smiley Frustrated).  Then we had problems with the line breaks.  So we tried my code editor but (aside from driving our technical writer crazy because he is not familiar with it -- it is nonstandard) it slightly changed some of the indentation.....

 

In short, we shouldn't have to look for another program when we want to do simple edits.

 

And it was quite a long time before we figured out that this plain text documentation could actually be formatted by inserting codes into the text.  This is soooo primitive!  Something as sophisticated as LabVIEW certainly ought to let us select text and make it bold, for example.

 

Batya

BPerlman
Member

I see this idea was suggested years ago.  Anything doing with it?

BPerlman
Member

AT LEAST please add Ctrl-A to select all!!!!!

 

Batya

opejumeys
Member

Documentation could be automatically added based on comments assigned to the Inputs/Outputs of the subVI.

 

For the main description, you can have a specific format or something (such as "Title:" as shown below) that will pull into the main description. 

 

For each of the Input/Output controls, you could automatically bold the name of the control and then add the documentation from an attached comment.

 

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Note:  I had to manually add the same comments and VI description for this screenshot.

Robert_Hohlfelder
Member

What can I say other than "me, too" ? I strongly agree with the points being made in this duscussion. Anyone who succeeds at the CLD exam has had the importance of good documentation beaten into their heads. How ironic, then, that LabVIEW's built-in tools for editing documentation are so feeble!

 

One of my colleagues came up with an idea similar to the one posted yesterday by opejumeys; I think that's a good one, integrating block diagram documentation with front panel documentation.

 

I never paid much attention to vi scripting until a colleague showed me how it could be used to programatically change the descriptions of vi's and front panel objects. Once I saw that, I whipped together my own vi-documentation tool which, although crude, is vastly better than the modal "Properties" dialog. NI could do a much better job of this than I could.