Control tip strip input box should not accept more than max allowed number of characters

[MGiacomet]

The documentation states that the Tip Strip is limited to 255 characters, however the Documentation tab of a control Properties page does no checking against that limit. One will only find out if there are more than 255 characters during execution, when the tip strip is truncated!

Please enforce the character limit of the Tip Strip input box, at design time. Also, while at it, make that box taller.

[JÞB]

I'm going to go here!

WTFWYT?  Tip strips are the best way for the Developer to inform the User what the data means.  Can you give me a use case example where 255 Characters are not enough? "View latest calulated results" is one of the longest Tips I ever wrote.  Talk to the user and get their story.  then make the tip strips speak to them!  Additional info should be in the help file link.

[Yamaeda]

If you enforce the tip strip length it's no real use to make the box bigger, unless you have some very large fonts.

/Y

[Mads]

"WTFWYT?  Tip strips are the best way for the Developer to inform the User what the data means.  Can you give me a use case example where 255 Characters are not enough?".

It seems to me that you have misunderstood the idea (or is this a comment to a now deleted comment?). The original idea is not saying that it should allow more than 255 characters, on the contrary it says that the input control should enforce the 255 limit, to avoid that people put in more text than the tip strip actually supports displaying. But with support for 255 characters the idea also says that the input control should be large enough to actually show the full string, without a need for scrolling.

[JÞB]

on the contrary it says that the input control should enforce the 255 limit, to avoid that people put in more text than the tip strip actually supports displaying.

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I could refocus on that....  Localization is going to be a huge barrier.  Assuming there is a developer out there that writes longwinded Tip Strips (Better practice is to keep them short and on point) and translates them to German, witch is often the longest character localization,  how would you expect the Documentation Property page to react when the char limit is exceded because of translation?  The Property itself will limit the max length of the string but..... Some hairy scary stuff will happen to the property editor.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done...The length of the Property itself should be a suffient barrier.  That and short, sweet tips as a general rule of better practice. 

[Mads]

Sure, the 255 limiting functionality here will not be able to fix cases where people are doing automated translations, that would need to be handled by the tip strip property node instead.

So that's a natural extension of this idea perhaps; that the tip strip property node should return a warning (string trimmed to 255 characters) or error if you write a string to it that is longer than 255 characters...The idea at hand covers the issue when you edit the tip strips in the user interface though.

[MGiacomet]

It never ceases to amuse me how some people in this forum do not fully read/understand an Idea, but are quick to bash it and act self-righteously. Then, when proven wrong, try to come up with justifications why they are still "right"... Mads, thanks for you support and attempts to clarify the Idea. Jeff, while I agree with you that Tips should be kept short, the problem still exists (no warning) as you well pointed out a possible issue with translations. See, "any limit is a limit". For the sake of argument, if one were to accept your initial example ("View latest calulated results") as a good one and say that the 30 characters in that sentence are the "limit", when you were to correct the spelling error ("calulated" vs. "calculated", a missing "c"), it would clip the final "s" and that would only be found at run-time. Again, Jeff, the Idea is about enforcing the limit, whatever it is. If you think 255 is too much, create your own Idea!

[JÞB]

I'll take my licks!  It may be possible to improve that Property dialog tab!  

[Darren]

Available in LabVIEW 2016 and later. The 'Tip strip' entry on the Properties dialog now has a maximum size of 255 characters.

[SteenSchmidt]

This doesn't seem to be completed afterall? At least in LabVIEW 2019 I can enter a 374 character tip strip without the editor telling me anything is wrong:

Regarding long tip strips: I agree that usually they should be brief and to the point, but sometimes it can be beneficial to have a longer explanation instead of having the user hit up the documentation, as in this shown example (shows the truncated tip strip):

A separate issue, but I would actually prefer the tip strip not being stretched out to one long line, but kept as a more condensed box as shown here (but that might be an OS thing):