Description and Tip-like Help Hint Comments for Block Diagram

[SteveP]

Comments for code explanation of the block diagram can be added using the text labeling tool but they can occupy too much space.  Many LabVIEW examples use an alternative of placing a marker label such as "1", "2", etc at desired locations which refer the viewer to another comment location on the block diagram where expanded corresponding text is displayed.  This means though that diagram scrolling must be done to see the explanation for the comment.  How about a Help Hint type of "hot" label that when hovered over pops up a short comment and when clicked on shows a more detailed comment.  Similar to the front panel's Description and Tip but available at edit time and maybe not requiring a right click to see the full comment description - just a left click.

[tst]

Note that you can do something similar today by placing a picture or a colored string as a merge VI in your palettes. Then, after you drop it, you change its description property (through the right click menu) and you will see it if you have the context help window open.

You can see an example here.

[SteveP]

Your example points to the approach of using Context Help to display the Description of a string constant which comes close to what I had in mind.  Thanks.

[tst]

By the way, this is not to say I don't like the idea. It would be nice if NI had implemented such a creature on their own. At best, it would probably open a larger comment which will float over the code somehow when you click on it. At minimum, it will open or close the CH window when clicked on (so you don't have to go to the toolbar button or use Ctrl+H).

Not sure if it's worth spending developer time on, though.

[TroyK]

My similar suggestion is to have a small comment icon that pops up a window when you hover over it with the mouse. If you click on it you can edit the comment. Similar to the way comments work in Foxit pdf reader.

[JackDunaway]

Pseudo_Kudos to Troy K's suggestion.

[Intaris]

I like Troy K's idea of linking the comments to a particular user.  I could imagine this would have benefits in multi-developer situations....

[ChillyWilly]

I second Troy's idea.  this is what i was thinking about and was about to add a new post but decided to do my due diligence and search for it instead.  I'm gladd i did so I'll just add my kudos to this post.

[henriksandin]

This is something I've been looking for too. Great improvement for LabView

[AristosQueue (NI)]

SteveP: Please check out LV 2013. We added attached comments there. Does that approach satisfy you sufficiently that we can close out this idea?

[boulderjoe]

I think this idea should still be open. Attaching comments doesn't fix the problem of having to arrange the block diagram around a bunch of information that only needs to be viewed temporarily (e.g.,"Why is this here? *read comment* Ok, Got it *comment collapses"). See Excel's commenting feature for a basic example, which also has the ability to globally show and hide comments (another idea posted here). Imagine if you had to just NOT USE a big block of cells in excel because you wanted to put in a comment? That would be silly, and so is ballooning a block diagram to 2x the real estate for static comments. Combining the auto-collapsing comments as demonstrated in Excel with an ability to pin them to avoid collapse must happen.