Allow viewing of Map Constant as Icon

[pauldavey]

Just as for Clusters, I would like to be able to change a Map constant on the Block Diagram to be viewable as an Icon when it has been made a TypeDef.  You can't directly edit the constant data, so for me it doesn't make it worth the large amount of real estate that it can take up, especially if you have a Map of Maps/Sets.

So for example, instead of this:

I would like:

[AristosQueue (NI)]

A reasonable suggestion. Not sure if we'll get around to it, but I'll put my personal kudos on it.

[cbutcher]

If there was some way for an "Empty Map Constant" to be connected to the outside of a shift register and take up as little space as possible, that would be fantastic.

Presumably the problem is that the propagation needs to go from downstream (SR) to upstream (constant) but I have no idea if this is a possibility...

Failing that, being able to reduce the size of a specific constant would at least help a lot.

[Stinus Olsen]

Why this was not implemented at the same time as the Map primitives themselves is a mystery to me..

Here, take my upvote.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

@StinusOlsen: Not much of a mystery.

It is secondary functionality not needed for the feature to work that would have pushed the feature out another release cycle if we had insisted on having it.

I prioritized making the set/map controls/constants editable long way ahead of on a purely cosmetic feature like this, and even editability didn't make the cut. (Editing also didn't make the cut for LV 2020, but not for lack of working on it... turns out to be a complicated UX to figure out... we haven't liked any of our designs, and if you'd like to help with that discussion then go here.)

Honestly, it has the same arguments against doing it that we had for all non-cluster types: it doesn't tend to grow over time. That's what made clusters special on the diagram, as compared to arrays or numerics or any other type that is typically typedef'd. Sets have one element type. Maps have two. True, if they contain a cluster, they might grow, but that argument applies equally to arrays. So if we were going to do this for sets/maps, it would probably be a feature we would do for all data types.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

> Failing that, being able to reduce the size of a specific

> constant would at least help a lot.

Create a subVI works well for constants. I do wish we had a better way to define constants (similar to how a global VI works for variables), but a subVI, particularly one marked as inline, accomplishes the task.