VI documentation Upgrade

[JÞB]

The VI>Properties>Vi documentation could use an overhaul.  Simpler access from the Menu (A ribbon button ?) Templates and Auto insertion of definable fields.  A real text editor launch and well how about being able to resize the edit box so you can see what you typed.   Cut-and Paste from notepad works - but can't we get a bit more elegant than that.  Type bold text - get Bold text Underline, italics.  Justify left center or right.  Heck- this editor for the Idea exchange would look great in my vi documentation pop-up.

[FabiolaDelaCueva]

I was about to create an idea just like the opejumeys note in this post. 

I always put a free label in my block diagram that describes what the VI does and then copy and paste it in the documentation VI. The problem with this approach is that one of the two can become stale. Also, when working with others, they might not share this technique of mine and we end up with stale documentation.

Another option would be to have diagram label, like the subdiagram labels added to case structures and loops, except this woudl be a diagram label for the VI's block diagram and whatever text is there, it is the same as the text in VI Documentation. Just my two cents.

[opejumeys]

Here are some snippets that show how to update the descripition based on Specific bookmarks.  We are going to start using this for our documentation.

Comments are welcome.

Here is the snipped of the subVI code:

[JÞB]

Comments are welcome.

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Then you might wish to repost to a forum.

[cirrusio]

 Well...I was about to post yet another one of these similar ideas, but, not wanting to get closed down as a duplicate, I will go along with this one.  To be honest, any documentation improvements would be wonderful.  But, why not consider something simple like Markdown.  Markdown is a text to html converter that is much less verbose and much simpler to type (no more brackets).  Markdown or Markdown flavored documentation is used by a lot of products (github, tiddly wiki, python...) and many tools have popped up to convert Markdown comments in scripted languages into actual html documentation (doxygen is one that pops to mind).  I have found that, in terms of productivity, I get a lot more done working in something like this than in raw html.  But, like I said before, I would welcome any change to the somewhat byzantine documentation tool available now.

Once duplicates are aggregated, there seems to be concensus that the current documentation tools are insufficient.  And we actually have some head nodding from employees at NI.  So, how come there has been no movement on this or the past 5 years since this post was put up.  I mean come on!  NI had time to develop the silver control suite but couldn't put the effort into improving a tool that, as pointed out in comments above, is recognized by NI as being of the utmost importance!  

Would be nice to hear from someone why there has been no movement (not even a little)...

Matt

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Silver controls: two developers, one year, in their spare time between other projects.

Documentation overhaul: Well, I know it takes more than that. Now, how could I be sure that it would take more than two developers and more than a year? Perhaps I was counting heads and calendar entries...

On a totally unrelated topic... There are ideas that are actively being worked on that I have lobbied to roll to "In Development" but which are far enough out that others on the team believe should stay as "New" until we're closer to certain what we're going to release and when. Obviously that can't apply to something like this topic, as upgrading the documentation facilities is straightforward enough... unless that is part of something larger...

Anyway, I wish I had more to share with you. Sorry, Matt. No updates today. But check back in August. You never know what I might learn in a few months.

[sabri.jatlaoui]

Hi Everyone.

I made a package to quickly document your VI.

https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-46663

Regards

[Bill_DuBose]

I can't find any documentation on the use of syntax in the documentation window. I have found by looking at VIs written by others that the use of <b>and </b> make the text bold. I have seen an attempt to use <i>and</i> presumably to italicize the text, but the content help does not interpret the <i> and </i> so they just appear like regular text. is "Bold" the only option for the VI documentation?

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Bill_DuBose: In the help for the dialog, we list the syntax available.

http://zone.ni.com/reference/en-XX/help/371361N-01/lvdialog/documentation_properties/

The <b></b> tags are the only supported tags.

[Mr._Jim]

bump

Eventually we reach a sufficient pain point with a repeated development chore that it warrants just writing our own UI to do so.

I think I've reached that pain point and I'm going to do write my own. This would be a good candidate for the LabVIEW open source initiative.

Side note, we miss you, AQ.

Mr. Jim