LabVIEW Idea Exchange

Currently each error in terminal contains the following description: "<B>error in</B> can accept error information wired from VIs previously called. Use this information to decide if any functionality should be bypassed in the event of errors from other VIs. Right-click the <B>error in</B> control on the front panel and select <B>Explain Error</B> or <B>Explain Warning</B> from the shortcut menu for more information about the error." This occupies 367 characters (bytes).

Currently each error out terminal contains the following description: "<B>error out</B> passes error or warning information out of a VI to be used by other VIs. Right-click the <B>error out</B> indicator on the front panel and select <B>Explain Error</B> or <B>Explain Warning</B> from the shortcut menu for more information about the error." This occupies 271 characters (bytes).

This applies to terminals of all styles: Classic, Modern, Silver, Fuse Design System.

This adds a total of 638 characters (0.62 KB) to each and every VI that uses a pair of error in/out terminals, which is probably a majority of VIs in LabVIEW.

The descriptions appear in the Context Help window and can be useful to beginners. But this benefit is not worth 638 bytes of space in so many VIs. The contents of the descriptions should be mentioned in training material such as LabVIEW Core 1 or the LabVIEW Help.

This proposal is to remove (clear) the error in and error out descriptions, such that VIs are "slimmer" and codebases are smaller.

Current state:

Suppose you have some neat code that bundles/unbundles elements from either a typedef-ed cluster or a class. You even provided free space in case some names are changed in the future:

But then, when you change an element's name to a longer one, this happens:

Now, to have the same neat code as before, you have to surgically select, move and realign the Bundle/Unbundle nodes correctly:

Since these nodes are resized in a centered manner, to keep neat code without the need to realign everything by hand, you must provide free space both on the left AND on the right.

Remark 1: The same issue can happen when you select another item with a different width in the Bundle/Unbundle node.

Remark 2: It seems all nodes of class "Named Bundler" and "Named Unbundler" are concerned. So that also includes the Waveform / Digital Waveform / Digital Data Bundlers/Unbundlers.

Proposed Idea:

When a Named Bundler or a Named Unbundler updates its own size (either because the typedef is changed or because the user selects another item), it resizes to the right instead of resizing from the center. So, if you want to provide space for further modifications, you only need to put space on the right (and not both on the left and the right). Also, I find that resizing to the right is quite consistent with the left alignment of the element names.

Regards,

Raphaël.

The window for selecting interface inheritance isn't resizable -- and is rather painful to use as a result since interface names from dependency libraries are almost always going to be long. Allowing this window to be resizable would be a simple way to make this more pleasant.

(Adding a search/filter option would also be great, along with just generally making all windows resizable, but that's a bigger ask, and has been requested elsewhere.)