Separation of Control and Data Typedefs

[Intaris]

When using strict typedefs, the automatic inclusion of the typedef in teh actual datatype of a control (and the asociated data passing down the wire) leads to some annoying corner cases.

Imagine a FP with several different strict typedef Booleans (we re-designed and standardised our entire UI recently).  If you try to group value change events for these in a single event structure pane then the datatype changes to Variant.... Huh?  Because the typedef is a part of the datatype (allowing downstream wires to "create Indicator" or "create Control" with teh correct representation) the IDE realises different wire datatypes and moves to a more generic type (variant).

In this example I don't care that the boolean wire originated from a strict typedef, it's purely for cosmetic reasons.  I would ideally like to be able to have a strict representation of the control (which will auto-update if the typedef is modified) with a standard datatype (non-strict wire).

[fabric]

I feel your pain.

My ideal solution would be to allow multiple "views" for any user-defined typedef, where each view inherits from the basic data-type. So, the underlying data is defined and then it can be extended with different skins, data entry ranges, etc... 

I may use a well-padded, stylish view for UI elements and another more compact view for passing clusters between sub-VIs... but all views would have the same data-type.