How do I specify order of Icon Templates?

[Bob_Schor]

I use Icon Templates (for the Icon Editor) a lot, and have about 30-40 that I use regularly.  I previously had them in several folders in Icon Templates, including a few at the top level, a half-dozen in a folder called Excel, most of them in a folder called Labs, and a few duplicates of Labs templates that mysteriously appeared in the folder VI\3rd party.

I didn't pay much attention to the order of the Templates when I opened the Template tab on the Icon Editor -- they seemed to be "logically ordered", except for the occasional "duplicate" template that showed up from the 3rd party folder.

I was building a new LabVIEW installation, and wanted to copy my Icon Templates folder, but decided to also "reorganize" it.  I moved all of the icons formerly in Labs into VI\3rd party, and got rid of some stragglers.

Now, when I open the Template tab, I find that the Templates appear in "reverse alphabetical order" based on their name, not their path.  I'm definitely not happy about having "Small" come before "Big" (because S comes after B), and also would prefer that organizing the Templates into Folders would mean that the order would be respected when they appear in the list of Templates (so that, for example, all of the Templates in the \Excel folder would be together and not interspersed with the Templates in \VI\3rd party).

I'm guessing that the order is set/saved somewhere, as I'm pretty sure that it wasn't previously "reverse-alphabetic across all folders".  If so, I'd like to know where/how this is done so I can "adjust it to my preferences".  Who can clue me in?

Bob Schor

[BluJae]

Bob,

Have you tried changing the way the files are sorted in Windows Explorer? It sounds like you have, but I just want to confirm.

I did some digging around in the LabVIEW Data folder, as well as the "hidden" Program Data folder but I have been unable to find a configuration file specifically tied to the Icon Editor. I did notice some .bin files related to the Icon Editor, so I'm beginning to wonder if the order configurations are determined in the code used to develop the small application.

I am going to bring this issue to some colleagues, but in the meantime, if you could snap a photo of the Windows Explorer representation of your template directory and how LabVIEW is organizing it just so I could show some of my peers.

Regards,

BluJae 

[Bob_Schor]

Sorry -- I was travelling and away from my computer.  The two images show the way the 3rd party VI templates look in the Icon Editor, and the way they appear in Windows Explorer.  [I also looked using the DOS Dir command -- same order].  As near as I can tell, it's reverse-alphabetic.  I may have another PC that I haven't "reorganized" where the order makes more sense to me, but it would really be nice to "understand" how this works so we can "tweak" it to suit our (perhaps weird) preferences.

BS

[Bob_Schor]

In the Icon Templates folder, there are a series of .bin files bearing the file name of specific installed LabVIEW versions.  If you look inside them, they contain (binary) information that includes the file names, plus (mysterious) "other stuff".  The order there seems to be the same as the order in the Templates (but not the order in the Windows Folder).  Is this a file whose format is "known", which would allow us to read, re-order, and write it back out?

BS