Using mouse to operate controls while not looking.

[shoneill]

Hi,

what about using keyboard events to control the movement with the cursor keys (Or the numeric keypad to include diagonal movement). I personally always find the keyboard much better for fine work.

The parameters to be controlled can also be switched this way (numers 1-9 for example).

Shane.

[Peg]

We have tried cursor keys and find that the cursor position moves relative to the decimal point which causes us problems. For example, if we place the cursor just to the right of the decimal point, the increments occur in tenths until we go below 0. The appearance of the negative sign forces the cursor into the ones place and suddenly our voltages are jumping by ones and we have lost our settings. It mgiht seem like this is minor but remember that we are looking at the spot, not at the front panel. If we are not tweaking voltages around zero, the up/down arrows work ok though. Just looking for something more foolproof. Maybe you know of a way to force the cursor to stay in position, or to set the increment size.
By the way, I was unable to open your example. I
have LabView 6.0.
Thanks, Peg

[Peg]

Hi Greg,
I have been fiddling with your slider suggestion and it seems promising. It would be really nice if there were a way to force the thumb to remain stationary (no matter where on the thumb you click)when clicked on until the mouse is actually moved. I have the thumb a pretty good size to make it easy to hit, but if I hit it away from its center, it still jumps. What I like is that once you click and keep the left button down, you don't actually have to keep the cursor over the thumb to make it move right and left.
I haven't had a chance to pursue your pot ideas.
Thanks, Peg

[djadjok]

The problem is that Peg can not use Event Structure as it owns LV 6.0, so your example will not work for him...
But, anyway, some - really very limited number of special keys - can be mapped to controls (as ESC, Enter, F1-F10, etc) in earlier versions of LV. May be this can be also a solution - just to map two keys to two boolean controls and use them as up/down arrow keys).

[Tom WP]

No my suggestion of using the mouse position works in LV6.0.2, trust me.
You can only use the picture control though!

[shoneill]

Tom, I think it`s my example (keyboard events) which doesn`t work in 6.0.

Shane

[shoneill]

My initial idea was to use the key bindings to do exactly that, but to be honest I was shocked at how limited the choice of key bindings is. Is there a reason why so few keys are available for this? Surely it should be possible to use other keys (I understand that string inputs require that alphanumeric keys are unbound, but the option should at least be available).

The problem with mapping keys is also that the control will only be highlighted, not activated. You would need to press F1 to choose and then spacebar to activate a button associated with F1. Cumbersone to say the least.

Shane.

[shoneill]

I just had a look at LV 5.1 (it`s really useful having more than one version of LV on one computer). Is it maybe possible to link a menu item to a particular key combination (ctrl 😎 and then control the desired characteristics dynamically based on this?

I don`t know if holding down the key combination will perpetually call the menu item, or if it will only called once (I`ve never implemented user-menus myself).

Shane.

[djadjok]

Hmm... Looks really strange for me as I was sure that it works well with Enter button and now I've just tried with function keys - all works well, you can not only highlight, but also "press" button with function key shortcuts. So I wonder why you have mention pressing spacebar here - this is kind of a really different behavior for key pressing...

[shoneill]

This is true, for Boolean controls the assigned function key will also "press" the button.

That`s what I get for reading the help file without trying out something myself.

Doh!

Shane.