"Edit items" screen of rings need to support e-format for the value

[altenbach]

For illustration, create a ring, set the representation to DBL and uncheck "sequential values".

You would think we should be able to enter any value we want on the "edit items" screen, but just try e.g. entering two items with the following two values 3.45e-12 and 8e-7.

The display never switches to E-format and all we later see is 0.00000. The dialog actually throws an error complaining about duplicate values. 😞

Note that the ring itself can work with such values perfectly well but the only way to enter them successfully is by writing to a "strings and values []" property. We can later read them back and they are actually perfectly fine.

Here is an illustration. The edit items is completely useless here. We (1) cannot see the values and (2) we cannot successfully edit them. This is an unecessary limitation.

IDEA: The edit items screen of rings needs full support for the selected datatype.

[JÞB]

Truely the items editor needs an overhaul! as suggested by this idea.  Please santa, can I have a full featured items editor for christmas (and a VI documentation editor too----)

We know LabVIEW differs from Text based languages but some of the "Text editing" features in LabVIEW seem like the "draw a diagonal line across the card edges" work around that was so popular to keep your program in order before text languages were invented. 

Yes, I am stating that overhauling of items editors and VI documentation would be as revolutionary to LabVIEW as the Flair pen was to computing with punch cards. 

[altenbach]

Agreed.

See, if we had this idea implemented, the "edit items" listbox could be implemented as an array of (string+value) clusters, where the value field would be a plain numeric control with all the built-in input validation. 😄

[X.]

"draw a diagonal line across the card edges": I had to think for a few seconds before I figured that you are probably referring to the time where punched cards were used to program computers?

I am dreaming of programming environment where you would just enunciate what you want your program to do ... and voila! A full blown application would appear in front of your eyes (I'd love that as a researcher).I guess that would be called LabSPEAK then...and of course, our grand-kids would have LabTHINK to work with.

[tst]

> I am dreaming of programming environment where you would just enunciate what you want your program to do ... and voila! ... I guess that would be called LabSPEAK then

It's not quite there yet, but you could start with LVSpeak.

[X.]

Wow! It's progressed a lot since I last checked it out! The only problem I foresee is that it might not undertand my accent. For instance, Google speak search interprets my name as "n1gger midget" 

[smercurio_fc]

I'm wondering if the fact that it doesn't display the values correctly is actually a bug.

[JÞB]

I'm wondering if the fact that it doesn't display the values correctly is actually a bug.

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I've considered it a bug- And the "Value required for "-" (Item Seperator) and the refusal to allow multiple "-" items And can't format %0.6x (Nice for color controls)....You CAN add multiple Item separators via the strings property- but the items editor will puke on you if you accidentally open it after doing so and then disable the Cancel button so you have to break the ring to exit   Not NI's finest achievment. 

[JÞB]

I'm wondering if the fact that it doesn't display the values correctly is actually a bug.

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