Use tab key to switch to editing the next item's label in a cluster

[leahmedwards]

I was doing a CLA paper the other day where I had to make a calculator-style input cluster control and I found it a real pain to edit all of the button labels by double clicking on each, pressing delete and retyping. It was even still a pain when I switched tools to the text input tool. I was wondering if, when editing the label of an object in a cluster, the tab key could be made to highlight the text of the item label of the next object in a cluster's tab order.

How it would work:

• User selects a item label within a cluster control, by double clicking it (e.g. on front panel or block diagram), or using the text edit tool.
• User types new string and then tab key
• Cursor is moved to next item label with the text selected, according to the tab order of the items. This means that they can...
  • replace the label string if they press backspace/delete and retype what they want
  • append to the label string if they press the right arrow key
  • go to the next item label by pressing tab again
  • (n.b. if the item's label wasn't visible, it might have to be made visible)

This functionality could potentially work on button boolean texts and captions too, but would be more fiddly as not every object has this property. Cluster item labels are super important else when you look back at the constant, it makes no sense.

What are your thoughts?

[thols]

I like it. Do you mean, in short, to be able to traverse through cluster item properties in the same way as one can traverse the item-selection in a cluster. E.g. also by using CTRL+Arrow down to move inside an item?

[leahmedwards]

I like it. Do you mean, in short, to be able to traverse through cluster item properties in the same way as one can traverse the item-selection in a cluster. E.g. also by using CTRL+Arrow down to move inside an item?

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@thols

Ooh - CTRL+Down arrow isn't one that I've heard of before! Thanks for that. I gave it a go but it just seems to Run the VI in a paused state, for me on my LabVIEW 2018. Could you kindly explain what I'm missing?

I see that the Tab key works within the right click > properties menu of objects - I'd forgotten about that.

What I'm going for is like triple clicking a cluster item label to select the whole string, and then being able to press tab to get to the next cluster item label highlighted in the same way. To make it super easy to replace the string.

[wiebe@CARYA]

The problem with CTRL+down is that sometimes the cluster isn't visible to the user. It's just there for the programmer.

Back in LV7 there was an option to automatically step into clusters. It was removed for reasons unknown to me. Tabbing has been hell since then. 

Making tabbing work properly for (recursive) clusters, (recursive) subpanels is very, very, hard. Sometimes I want my users to be able to tab into tables, list boxes and arrays (with clusters) as well.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I remove clusters from my UI VIs. Simplifies so much.

But tabbing is hell in LV. Keyboard and mouse behaviors are one of those areas of the code that I don't get into much, and I really wish we had better support for. A simple "focus received" event would do wonders for being able to do custom tab programming.

[crossrulz]

To add to AristosQueue's comment: Key focus Event 

[MichaelBalzer]

I use this feature all the time in Windows file explorer - F2 to rename a file, then tab to go to the next file to rename. When doing control renaming in LabVIEW (of loose controls, or in a cluster), I've pressed tab many times expecting to jump to the next control to begin renaming it.