code commenting feature request

[TCPlomp]

Some (little known) coding tips:
-Show the label of loops for documentation
-Put comments on a wire (right click->description), this shows up in the online help (ctrl-h)
-Use enums
-Use sub-VIs, every sub-vi should have a meaningfull icon and description
-Use the description of controls and indicators including limits that normally apply

Ton

[david_jenkinson]

I am unfamiliar with adding to the palette as a "merge vi".  I'll have to research this.  I know you can have user libraries, but I take it this is different.  I'll research the help.

[tst]

Here's a quick link you can start with.

[Neil.Pate]

right-click --> wire descriptions

great suggestion, somehow I missed this totally in all my time of using LV!  Thanks!!!

[WilliamLee]

One suggestion that I had mentioned before would be a documentation system similar to doxygen, that can generate XML, HTML, PDF, etc.. type help.  A simple documentation box is like a label and can not be easily reused to generate documentation in another form (report, web, etc.) 

Will

[tst]

Recursively parsing the diagram for all the comments should be relatively easy using private properties, but what would you do with the text once you had it?

[WilliamLee]

You could generate documentation to help describe the code (such as what NI does with its help) to users of the VI. 

The documentation could be formatted as:

VI name

Small Diagram showing inputs

Inputs

  --- -------------------------

  --- -------------------------

  --- -------------------------

  --- -------------------------

Outputs

  --  --------------------------

  --  --------------------------

Description

  blah blah blah blah

  blah blah blah blah

  blah blah blah blah

[smercurio_fc]

But you already get this from the built-in printing of the VI documentation, so what are you gaining?

[tst]

The comments I use in my code would usually not fit as a description for the VI. On occasion, I duplicate some of the text in the VI description by copying and pasting it, but I don't see a reason to do it automatically. That's what we have the VI description for.

[WilliamLee]

I find it useful to generate paper/PDF documentation and also searchable HTML or the Microsoft CHM format help.  Also, by generating the documentation into an markup language like XML, you can process it to generate/format the documentation how you want it (for example, company icon at the top, consistent formatting for headings from other reports).

Plus, better integration with other documentation systems (which work primarily on text-based languages) would help consolidate and streamline the developer toolchain.   This is just my idea; I don't know how well it would work on VIs (which are binary).