icon shows captions instead of labels

[adamrussell]

I recently started using captions on my front panel to make a better
display. I have two arrays of checkboxes. One is labeled "power tests
on/offs" and the other is "current tests on/offs". But for the display
on/off is sufficient for the user to see so I made that the caption for both
of them, and hid the labels. Then when I made a parent vi to run that vi I
saw that the icon connections are both labeled on/off. Why are my icon
connectors labeled with the captions instead of the labels?

[Doug (CapeFl)]

Do you have any text in the Label field, or only in the Caption field?
VI Help windows actually display both the Label field (in brackets) and the Caption field (in a box). If you only have text in the Caption field and nothing in the Label field, then the Caption text is all that will display, regardless of whether you hide or show it on the front panel.
I believe this is what you may be encountering. Experiment with these data fields and check it out.
Good Luck, Doug

[adamrussell]

Checked it out again and what I see in the wiring popup and also in the
context help window is just the caption and not the label. And yes I do
have an entry in the label field. This is lv 6i btw. It seems very
peculiar that the label shows on a vi's block diagram, but the caption shows
on the parent vi's block diagram.

"Doug (CapeFl)" wrote in message
news:50650000000500000058300000-991728092000@quiq.com...
> Do you have any text in the Label field, or only in the Caption field?
> VI Help windows actually display both the Label field (in brackets)
> and the Caption field (in a box). If you only have text in the
> Caption field and nothing in the Label field, then the Caption text is
> all that will display, regardless of whether you hide or
show it on
> the front panel.
> I believe this is what you may be encountering. Experiment with these
> data fields and check it out.
> Good Luck, Doug

[Doug (CapeFl)]

In addition to above, whenever a Label changes, LV will recompile, but not if a Caption changes.
And, since Captions can change programically via property nodes (which shouldn't require a recompile), only labels are used on Block Diagrams.
Therefore, you will always see the Labels on Block Diagrams vs. the Caption.

[adamrussell]

That's what I want, but it seems that the calling vi is showing the caption
instead of the label. Is this a bug?

"Doug (CapeFl)" wrote in message
news:506500000005000000AE300000-991728092000@quiq.com...
> In addition to above, whenever a Label changes, LV will recompile, but
> not if a Caption changes.
> And, since Captions can change programically via property nodes (which
> shouldn't require a recompile), only labels are used on Block
> Diagrams.
> Therefore, you will always see the Labels on Block Diagrams vs. the
> Caption.

[Doug (CapeFl)]

Well Adam, I can confirm (w/LV 5) that Captions show (vs. Labels) on the calling VI Icon windows, and Labels show on the block diagrams of all VIs.
Maybe this is a 'feature' more than a bug??
Next is to ask NI what they think...
Doug

[adamrussell]

I finally figured it out. In tools/options/block diagram, there is a
checkbox for "use control caption for subvi tipstrips". It's default set.
I had looked there before (really), but had not seen it.

"Doug (CapeFl)" wrote in message
news:506500000005000000D1300000-991728092000@quiq.com...
> Well Adam, I can confirm (w/LV 5) that Captions show (vs. Labels) on
> the calling VI Icon windows, and Labels show on the block diagrams of
> all VIs.
> Maybe this is a 'feature' more than a bug??
> Next is to ask NI what they think...
> Doug

[EricE]

Adam,

Identification can be difficult when a caption and label are used together on a control or indicator. On the VI's diagram the label identifies the control or indicator, but on the VI's connector pane the caption identifies the control or indicator. This is a problem when the VI is placed on another VI's diagram as a subVI and the terminals are looked at with the wiring tool or the help window open. The work-around to your problem is to attach the terminals for the connector pane and then save the VI before you hide the labels. This will ensure that the labels are associated with the terminals when called as a sub-VI. The ability to have the captions viewed with the wiring tool or the context help window was a feature added in Labview 5.

Best Regards,

Eric Enger
N
ational Instruments
Applications Engineer

[K1200LT_rider]

Good fix.  I was also frustrated at all the front panel's control captions showing up in Context Help instead of the labels when mousing over the icon in the upper right.  The option that fixed the problem seems to be misnamed, though - I would have never thought of trying that option if I would have seen it on my own.  Not intuitive at all.

NI: Would someone consider creating an explicit, separate option for how parameter connections show up in Context Help (defaulted to label!)?  I can't think of a case where anyone would want the captions to show.

[altenbach]

You probably noticed that you replied to a 11 year old thread. Most likely everything said here is already obsolete. 😄

If you think you have a good idea on how to improve LabVIEW in the future, feel free to start an entry in the LabVIEW Idea Exchange.

(make sure to do an exhaustive search first, the idea might already exist!)