If I could add a right-click menu for Mechanical Action on the Boolean terminal that were text-based instead of image-based, would that be ok? Would it be weird that the menus were different between FP and BD? I'm inclined to say 'no', because I just want the functionality, and I won't use it often enough that the difference would bug me. What do y'all think?
Here are some pics to better illustrate my question. Right now, you've got the (graphical) Representation pull-right on a numeric, on both the panel and the diagram:
What I'm proposing for this Idea Exchange idea is to provide the Mechanical Action options for a Boolean as a textual menu on the diagram, as opposed to the graphical menu on the panel:
I was wondering what people thought about this discrepancy. I'm ok with it, I wanted to see if everybody else was too.
I think the textual menus are much clearer. Having to inspect small b&w icons for small differences in a few pixels and then trying to understand these differences is too much for the new programmer.
Just to be more clear, I think both menus should be textual on the front panel and block diagram. (This might be a different idea, though.)
In fact when selecting a mechanical action from the menu, I end up reading the title of the context menu anyway when hovering over a mechanical action icon. So, what's the point of having the graphics there? (this statement coming from a graphical programmer should mean something :D)
(this statement coming from a graphical programmer should mean something)
Yup, I've thought about this a lot. The benefit of LabVIEW and data flow is the ease with which logic is conveyed with a block diagram. A lot of times, the quickest way to convey a particular piece of that logic (or in the case of Quick Drop, the means of constructing that logic), is with text.
Just to be more clear, I think both menus should be textual on the front panel and block diagram. (This might be a different idea, though.)
In fact when selecting a mechanical action from the menu, I end up reading the title of the context menu anyway when hovering over a mechanical action icon. So, what's the point of having the graphics there?
I'm the opposite when it comes to the boolean mechanical action. Coming from an Altera Quartus II FPGA background when I first started LabVIEW, the pictograms of waveforms for latch/switch were extremely helpful for me.
I fear that moving to just text for this will hinder LabVIEW newcomers.
I would be OK with text on the BD and icons on the FP.
The graphical form has both icon and text (tipstrip on the top). Why have less? I would like to have a header in each row indicating "Switch" and "Latch", just to make the selection faster.
Available in LabVIEW 2018 and later.