LabWindows/CVI Idea Exchange

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CVI currently provides a way for alligning controls (using the dotted matrix). But, with large UIs, this method is inefficient and users must align controls over large distances by hand from the Property Browser. I propose an upgrade that would help users achieve alignment by drawing lines that unite the control being moved and any other control that happens to be close to alignment with it (Figure 1).

This feature would increase usability and productivity (which seems to be decreasing by increasing the size and complexity of UIRs).

Figure 1: Control alignment in Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010, for the C# interface editor.

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Improved error reporting

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Starting from CVI2010, the User Interface Browser and the Attribute Browser are both located on the right of the UIR editor in the Workspace window.

I'd like to be able to hide these windows when required: when working on small screens like when you use a laptop these windows occupy a lot of space even if you reduce their size at the minimum.

In addition, the ability to choose which window to display on the bottom left could be a good option: up to version 2009 the bottom left side of the workspace window switched between the library tree (source editor) and the attribute browser (UIR editor).

Ideally, while in the UIR editor I would like to be able to:

Choose whether to show some window on the right side or not
In case nothing is shown on the right, choose whether to have the attribute browser, the library tree or the user interface browser in the bottom left angle

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Snippet manager

We hear all the time that should write code that is reuseable. It is difficult to plan so far ahead, so I listen to the preachers but seldom follow them.

However, it is clearely easier to use snippets, code fragments, that I put together for something, even tested them and I remember that I have done that once, but finding it again is too much hassle, it is just 3 lines, 5 lines of code. It owuld be nice to be able to manage such snippets, copy them, tag them,or even share them; I recon, there are snippet libraries out there;,out of sight, out of reach; but it would be really nice when the need arises, - you know that nagging dejavue feeling- than I could find them, bag them an use them... With time, even nice and practical libraries could grow out of them snippets... 🙂

/Layosh

Hi,

Currently, when a CVI application is deployed on a PC with a DPI setting different than the development machine, the application will generally not look like how the programmer intended as the fonts get resized while the other UI elements do not, leading to overlapping text, awkwardly resized controls, etc. One way that DPI scaling could be implemented in CVI would be to use the same functionality as the 'Scale Contents on Resize' option for panels, where internally CVI could resize the panel and use this scaling to rescale all the UI elements (including fonts) on the panel to the appropiate size per the Windows DPI setting. This would make the panel look a lot closer to what the programmer intended and would generally make most applications usable with different DPI settings without any additional work from the programmer. Per my other suggestion, I would request that the programmer has the capability of disabling this functionality so they can handle DPI scaling themselves should they wish to do so.

Thanks.

In principle CVI supports external compilers for an optimized release version such as Intel's ICL and I managed to successfully compile release versions using ICL 11.1.

However, documentation on this issue is sparse.

It is even worse if one attempts to use an external linker which might be appropriate if one attempts to use e.g. Intel's MKL. Here I would love to see the support of external linkers in combination with an improved documentation.

Similarly, CUDA is becoming more attractive for more demanding floating point applications - I would consider it very useful if NI could provide e.g. an application note of how to do this in an easy to follow tutorial.

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This is sort of a slight extension of the valuable suggestion by vix (Go to Next/Previous function in source files😞

Right now, in the CVI IDE it is possible to have a function tree of all library functions - for larger projects it might be useful to also have a function browser for all the functions in the current project, thus not only permitting to jump to the next or previous function, as suggested by vix, but also to more easily return to a frequently used function by one mouse click on the function name in the function browser.

Functions could be grouped by file name (typically there is more than one source file in a project), or alphabetically...

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Preview in NIReport

A feature that is still missing in NIReport is the ability to show a preview on screen of the generated report.

This feature could help very much the developer in designing the report without the immense wasting of paper that its lack implies. Moreover, customers are more and more requiring this feature to check reports before actual printing them, especially in applications where reports can be tailored some way to adapt to customers requirements.

Both reasons prevent me at present to use NIReport,

Add a EVENT_VAL_COERCED

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Knowledge base Vs forum

What is differnce between the forum and the knowledge base ?

As far as I see the forum is where users ask questions and answers are provided, often by NI representatives.

The Knowledge base appears also to be where questions are aksed have solutions provided.

This means that I could search the knowledge base when the same question/solution is in the forum and vise-versa. Can these be in some way combined with a better search function .

It would also be useful to remember search location based on user login - The amount of times I end up with a solution using LabView (I do not use and hopefully never will use Labview).

Hello,

this is a minor issue but still it can be very inconvenient... Very inconvenient because it almost always happens to me that if editing a menu bar I inadvertently mess it up. This is because if one is inserting a new item or child item, after pressing the 'Insert Item' or 'Insert Child Item' button the active control is set to 'Constant name', see below.

But I am never editing the 'Constant name' but always the 'Item name' (and callback function, modifier key...). Hence I almost always start typing the item name until I realize that I was editing the wrong field.

So my suggestion is to consider changing the active control after one of the insert buttons has been pressed to 'Item name'.

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I'm strongly interested in getting back a feature that has already been removed with CVI2013. Until last week, I had good old CVI9.0.1 installed on my PC which was perfect for maintaining my biggest project, a SW tool that has more than 50DLLs around a single executable for controlling lots of devices using a script interpreter for fully flexible process flows.

Some of these DLLs even have cross-references. When modifying a header file that is not only included in the current project but also in other projects of the workspace, I used to see red flagged files in the affected projects to tell me the need of these to be recompiled.

This was really, really helpful to keep the overview!

Unfortunately this feature I don't see anymore in CVI2019 which leads to the fact that I have to either create/maintain a separate list for all external references or the necessity of walking through all projects in my workspace and compile them without knowing the necessity.

Both variants are very uncomfortable and an enormous waste of time in my daily work.

I know that this subject has already been refused some time ago, but I really want to encourage you rethinking this "not only nice to have".

I hope you understand my situation.

Thanx for supporting. CVI is great and I'm using it since more than 17years!

Regards

Manfred

The active configuration (Debug, Release, custom ones, ...) is shown in the bottom-right corner of the status bar (see attached config01.jpg).

I think that it would be better if this would be a menu ring that can be used to change the active configuration, without having to select Build >> Configuration >> xxxx (see config02.jpg)

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As CVI evolves (in age and functionality) I feel that additional efforts are required for maintaining the product, i.e, keeping it 'consistent' and avoiding a 'mosaic look' as if assembled by different engineers in different decades...

A simple example but also one I would like to see resolved is entering data types in the UI editor vs in a function call (PlotIntensity in this case):

So, for example, long long translates to int64... Why not simply use the identical terms??

I agree it could be worse but I also feel that this is a valid suggestion for future improvements...

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Attaching controls to a splitter in the UIR editor can be a pain if the panel has several controls on it. I'll make an example using CVI example SendMail: trying to add a vertical splitter and attach all controls to it in order to rearrange the panel when the user resizes it. This is the original panel, you can see the vertical splitter in the upper right corner:

First of all, if several controls are selected, they overlap in the right panel of the editor in a way different from the original panel. Here you can see that the decoration indicated by the arrow overlaps two string controls that I'm not able to operate on to select desired attachment mode. This means that I need to proceed to attach controls in steps, hoping new controls added are not overlapped by previous ones. Alternatively I can move controls in the right panel to encover hidden ones, but this ingenerates confusion as controls are no more in the original position besides being a waste of time.

Second item: if selected controls are on the "wrong" side of the panel, they are all grouped (and possibly overlapped) on the closest boundary of the right window. See this example: Send and Quit buttons are only partially visible on the lower left corner of the right window and additionally they are overlapped (in the small box how they appear if I select one of them and move it upwards):

I suggest that this function is improved with these additions:

Honour the z-plane order of the original panel when controls are selected for attachment and moved to the right side
Maintain original controls position when moved to the right panel. Consequently:
Have both scrollbars enabled in Controls on the Splitter window in order to navigate to the controls; at present only one of them is enabled, whether vertical or horizontal depending on the type of splitter

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LabWindows/CVI Idea Exchange

Upgrade the UIR editor to better align controls

Improve UI editor for editing tooltip strings

Import/Export Custom Environment and Color Settings

Improved error reporting

Ability to hide the User Interface and Attribute browser boxes

Snippet manager

Implement DPI scaling similar to 'Scale Contents on Resize'

better documentation / support of external compilers and linkers

project function browser

Preview in NIReport

Add a EVENT_VAL_COERCED

Knowledge base Vs forum

Change active control in Edit Menu Bar dialog to Item name

Bring back the "Mark files for compilation highlighting" which has been removed with CVI2013

Select the active configuration in the status bar

Add ability to copy/paste a string in the debugger

Consistent Data Types aka Quality Control

Provide virtual key for 'Print Screen' key

Improvement needed on "Attach controls" function for splitter controls

Add a branch for linker libs in the Project Tree