Offline Help window in LabVIEW 2022?

[Yndigegn]

About the problem of finding help for NI-DAQmx. Actually there are almost an endless amount of help texts to be found. But the web site search engine really sucks.

Searching for NI-DAQmx returns this :

However searching for DAQmx returns the relevant location as one of first options among millions or so :

Selecting one of the shown options gives you this :

Downloading the ' NI-DAQmx Help' section and the sub-section gives you a 1050 paged PDF file including chapter bookmarks ( page links ).

A first look into that PDF file is not a bad experience. However it is clear that no human has polished it. But I guess that's the price to pay for getting it for free. But I truly miss the PDF files from the past, 1995..2005 or so. They were proper reference material.

One can also download the full LabVIEW documentation. Don't do that. You will eventually get a 11000+ pages PDF document without bookmarks. And the content is a completely unreadable mess. But you can download smaller sections. That gives you bookmarks into that unreadable mess. Which is a help.

The new web layout is awful. The left 'Contents' listing should be scrollable independently from the text shown on the right side. Apparently it is meant to be so. But fortunately one can download the Content entries as PDF file(s). That is an important fix for that ugly layout.    

Regards

[billko]

I think the main issue for me is it makes me concentrate on navigating the help and not doing my work.

[Yndigegn]

Bill wrote : 

I think the main issue for me is it makes me concentrate on navigating the help and not doing my work.

NI tries to solve ( at least ) two problems without clearly writing so.

- Their proud history of good documentation has collected some dust lately. They try to fix that.

- And they intend to eliminate CHM help files.

To fix both problems they apparently intend to use their web page template.

However the web online help is next to useless if you try to read into a help subject directly. It is a real time consumer. And the lack of 'where am I' information makes it confusing.

But downloading a subject as a PDF is not a bad experience. And the PDF has bookmarks and can be searched. That concept is ok. 

Try downloading the NI-DAQmx Help and check. Reading a little in it then it is obvious that somebody has actually given the subject a thought.

Before reverting to PDF again, NI in 2019 came up with a horrendous proprietary .nihelp format. Fortunately they abandoned it quickly.

So writing proper documentation is certainly work in progress. Thank you.

However the other issue with the CHM files that we all look into ever so often to get VI help will fail miserable if they try to replace that with the current web template.

I cannot believe that anybody would want to look at a web page that will take up several times the display real estate for a help explanation compared to the current Help window for CHM files. CHM help is densely formatted information. WEB is fluff with banners and likes all over the place.

I guess somebody must have made a design template how the CHM replacement layout will look. I haven't seen one.

Regards

[Yndigegn]

I have to clarify my last entry.

LV 2022 Q3 does open up the standard online web template to display help for standard VI's. Replacing the previous offline CHM help window. More exotic vi's still open CHM help. So NI has started the transition.

Trying to download the VI help in an offline PDF fails though. The web site claims success yet it returns an empty file. So that implementation is still buggy. 

I wrote that the NIHELP format was horrendous. This is how it looked :

An offline format closely modelled as the current web template. It was horrendous because it used a lot of display real estate without giving clarity. To be fair it did skip the banners. Being proprietary also meant viewing on Windows ( and Mac ? ) only.

PDF has the disadvantage of introducing annoying page shift. Which looks silly for VI help.

However Adobe Reader has introduced the liquid mode in an attempt to eliminate visible page shifts.

So formatting the text with that option in mind may produce nice PDF text for VI help. But this is also work in progress.

Regards

[billko]

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@Yndigegn wrote:

I have to clarify my last entry.

LV 2022 Q3 does open up the standard online web template to display help for standard VI's. Replacing the previous offline CHM help window. More exotic vi's still open CHM help. So NI has started the transition.

Trying to download the VI help in an offline PDF fails though. The web site claims success yet it returns an empty file. So that implementation is still buggy. 

I wrote that the NIHELP format was horrendous. This is how it looked :

An offline format closely modelled as the current web template. It was horrendous because it used a lot of display real estate without giving clarity. To be fair it did skip the banners. Being proprietary also meant viewing on Windows ( and Mac ? ) only.

PDF has the disadvantage of introducing annoying page shift. Which looks silly for VI help.

However Adobe Reader has introduced the liquid mode in an attempt to eliminate visible page shifts.

So formatting the text with that option in mind may produce nice PDF text for VI help. But this is also work in progress.

Regards

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Are you using NXG?

[Yndigegn]

Bill wrote :

Are you using NXG?

[billko]

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@Yndigegn wrote:

Bill wrote :

Are you using NXG?

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Okay, i was just wondering because those looked like NXG terminals.

[Yndigegn]

For anyone curious about NIHELP, NI still offers the viewer to be downloaded :

Regards

[Yndigegn]

I got curious myself. Did NI use NIHELP for help in NXG 5.1 ..

No they didn't. Actually there were not much help at all. I never liked NXG, so didn't spend much time with it. So I might be wrong. But this is what I see if trying to get help for a VI :

The little pop-up context help window is not linking to a CHM file. There are no CHM files included in NXG.

Any other attempt to get help, the 'More Help' link and the two Documentation icons ends at the same sad web page shown. Could have been that NIHELP would have been used if NXG were not killed. I don't miss either.

Regards

[Jay14159265]

Its 2023 and I still cant find the help section for LabVEIW array : ( 

https://www.ni.com/docs/en-US/search?bundle=labview-docs&q=array