Wire label location

[vitoi]

LabVIEW 2010 introduces a new feature to label wires and associate this label with the wire. This is a great idea. However, the text goes over the middle of the wire and there is no way to change/customize this.

To me, wire labels should be above the wire. This is the convention on circuit diagrams. Placing a label on a wire "breaks" the wire and, to me, is similar bad-form to placing any other object on a wire.

So what I would like is shown below. There should at least be an option to allow the wire's label to be above the wire.

[jcarmody]

You can drag it to the top of the wire.  Isn't that enough?

[vitoi]

jcarmody,

LabVIEW 2010 added the ability to label a wire by right clicking it. This way the label is owned by the wire and if the wire is moved then the label moves with it. The only problem is it is labelled directly on the middle of the wire thereby "breaking" the appearance of the wire.

[jcarmody]

Right.  This I used LabVIEW 2010 and labeled the wire as you mentioned, then I dragged it to its position above the wire.  The label will move with the wire, but it's not always pretty so I think you'll end up moving it yourself anyway.

[Mark_Yedinak]

I would be fine with this as an option but I would not want to see this position for the label eliminated. On complex diagrams wires may need to be placed close together and by not allowing the label to be on top of the wire it forces the wires to be spaced further apart. This eats up more of the block diagram real estate. To convey that the label is part of the wire and help reduce the appearance of the wire break you can add some characters to the beginning and end of the label text to indicate a "connection". For example, your label could be something like ">label<", "<label>" or "-label-".

[vitoi]

Agreed, both options of having the label on the wire and above the wire should be possible,

[JÞB]

With Transparent wire labels the effect is improved for simple data types. 

If only there were an ini option to place wire labels as transparent

[JamesB.]

Or perhaps a shape (an oval?) or a background around the label that matches the wire color?

[dthor]

I've always been partial to having the option to have a background fill that is the same color as the data type. Or having text with the same color as the data type (though at times that might be very hard to read. Definitely don't make it the default, but have the option to have it)

[JÞB]

Something like this would be nice. without taking up too much BD space

[dthor]

Oh I like that idea Jeff, that looks classy. However, for longer or multiline labels, it may start to look like a wire has two sources (try covering up the left half with your hand, for example).