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AristosQueue (NI)

Icon editor could suggest glyphs to include based on VI contents/properties

Status: New

There are suggestions on the Idea Exchange to annotate subVI nodes with various attributes (this one, for example). I think that's a losing strategy. There just isn't space for all the annotations that might be of interest on a given node, and not all of the annotations make a difference to user's understanding of a given node. As an example, knowing that a subVI is reentrant is very important to understanding how a point-by-point read subVI works but unimportant to understanding how Trim Whitespace works. Also, not all of the annotations that we could imagine are simple "on or off" settings. A subVI that uses a local variable might be using it in an iterative algorithm or might be using it to store state between calls. If it is storing state, that might be something that a caller should know about.

 

These are the sorts of things that could be scanned for on a VI when LabVIEW launches the Icon Editor. If we had standard glyphs for interesting attributes of a VI, LabVIEW could have a section to recommend glyphs to add to the icon. This would not be an automated "always add this glyph" system that some people have requested because I do not think that we want the glyphs on every node just because it has the attribute. But some nodes it is worth calling out, and putting it in the Icon Editor would make it easy to add such glyphs. We might even have a fast "add recommended and arrange layers" button that spills all the glyphs onto the icon and then moves them around to minimize overlap, taking the existing layers into account.

15 Comments
JB
Trusted Enthusiast
Trusted Enthusiast

"This would not be an automated "always add this glyph" system that some people have requested because I do not think that we want the glyphs on every node just because it has the attribute."

 

Obviously, I have not read your description carefully enough. Thank you for making me aware.

 

As mentioned, I'm using customized glyphs. The problem is that you can easily forget to add/remove them while changing the configuration of the VI. Therefore I would be very interested in an automated modification according to the configuration.

AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

> The problem is that you can easily forget to add/remove them while changing the configuration of the VI.

 

Noted. I think this is an issue for VI Analyzer (it would couple well with Intaris' suggestion of using VI Analyzer plug-ins to suggest the glyphs in the first place). VI Analyzer could check a hierarchy as part of your release or SCC submission process to make sure that the glyph layers match the settings of the VI or that any differences are somehow acknowledged (i.e. tagged as "I know these don't match and that's the way I want it") by the developer.

johnsold
Knight of NI

My concern is that adding any feature which requires scanning a VI will slow down the launching of the Icon Editor which already takes far too long. Launch time is a separate issue but I do not see enough value in htis to justify any slow down.

AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

Johnsold: I'm minimally concerned about that.

a) A full traverse of even very large VIs is very fast, so it would matter what the contents of the particular analysis were, but there are many analyses that can be completed in far less than the 10ms that is a human-noticeable threshold for performance hit. I'm saying that from empirical data that I happen to have for LV 2015 for the <redacted discussion of unreleased LV version> feature.

 

b) The analysis can be run after the icon editor is launched, either in the background or on user request. The glyph suggestions do not have to be there right away, especially if the user intends on just typing in the name of the VI.

JW-JnJ
Active Participant

Good suggestion. I might also append this.

 

A VI has all of the code properties of it's SubVIs. How about scanning through the SubVI Icon Layers to populate "Suggested glyphs". When you place a glyph, it creates a new layer with that glyph name. There is a good chance you will want to convey at least one property of a SubVI in your current VI. There might also be custom graphics on a SubVI layer that you can place, which prevent the constant "close icon editor, open subvi, open icon editor, copy graphic, close icon editor, open icon editor, paste" (I REALLY hate that dance).

 

In the end, I'm all about making visual documentation easier.

 

This is nearly pushing into "new idea" territory

Josh
Software is never really finished, it's just an acceptable level of broken