LabWindows/CVI Idea Exchange

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Improved error reporting

Hello,

building upon my earlier (but difficult to implement) suggestion and the forum discussion on event data here I can provide a hopefully improved suggestion.

The issues addressed by this idea:

receiving an EVENT_DATA_CHANGED event for a numeric control does not mean that the numeric value has changed
receiving an EVENT_DATA_CHANGED event for a numeric control does not provide information if the value has been increased or decreased
receiving an EVENT_DATA_CHANGED event for a numeric control does not provide information if the 'up' or 'down' arrow button has been pressed (which is not necessarily the same as the second issue)

Idea: Provide eventData1 and eventData2 information.

For example, eventData1 could tell about the numeric value:

eventData1 = -1: numeric value has been decreased
eventData1 = 0: numeric value is unchanged
eventData1 = 1: numeric value has been increased

eventData2 could tell about the increment/decrement arrow, e.g.:

eventData2 = -1: decrement arrow has been pressed by mouse
eventData2 = -2: decrement arrow has been pressed on keyboard
eventData2= 1: increment arrow has been pressed by mouse
eventData2= 2: increment arrow has been pressed on keyboard

Since so far no eventdata are provided this suggestion should not break backward compatibility.

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From UI editor to UI browser

(Coming from this forum discussion)

If you double click on a UI browser element you'll go to the corresponding panel or control in the editor. That's good!

There doesn't seem to be a way to go the opposite direction (i.e. from a control in the user interface editor to the corresponding item in the user interface browser tree) : this could be useful in case of complex UIR files with several panels and controls, especially if you have more than one control array in it.

So I suggest to add two options to the control context menu to locate the control in the UI browser ad to locate in a control aray if it is included in any of them.

I'm thinking to something like that:

It would be handy if these new items could be assigned a shortcut key too: ctrl+U and ctrl+R could be a good choice (presently ctrl+U is not used in the UIR editor and ctrl+R is not active at design time)

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.

Hi,

The CVI runtime engine calls the Windows API function SetProcessDPIAware() that tells Windows that the application is DPI aware in Windows Vista and later. This seems to be forced upon all applications built with CVI, whether they are actually DPI aware or not. Most applications built in CVI using the default tools are not going to be DPI aware out of the box, and setting Windows to another DPI setting than what the programmer used to create the UI will cause many graphical glitches and possibly make the application unusable. The purpose of this request is to suggest to NI that the CVI Runtime Engine not call SetProcessDPIAware() so that the programmer can handle (or not handle) DPI scaling as they see fit. If the programmer does nothing, the application will then, by default, be scaled using Windows DPI Virtualization. This is not optimal, but it would leave the application usable and looking like how the programmer intended.

This is per this discussion here:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabWindows-CVI/Forcing-DPI-Virtualization/td-p/3079742

Thanks.

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,

I have a very elaborate Front Panel, developed in LabVIEW 8.6, which I'd like to import into my LabWindows/CVI 2013 development environment.

The background is that the new company colleagues are very proficient in C and want to use LabWindows/CVI to re-program the current state of the software and maintain and update only using LabWindows/CVI in the future.

This would be very usefull, since it would save a lot of time and keep the naming of the elements in the front panel as-is. For the customers it would mean, having the same tool they are used to work with and receive much faster and better service when it comes to changes or additional functionality.

If there is already a way to do this I'd be happy to have a step by step guide.

According to the feedback from the forum, this still doesn't exist. (http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabWindows-CVI/Can-I-convert-a-LabVIEW-Front-Panel-into-a-LabWindows-CVI-User/td-p/3044003)

Find Variable Info When In Release Build

Tabbed Search Results

Auto bracket closing

In CVI 2013 is option “Run -> Attach to Process…” and new is option “<< Running >> -> Detach from a process” during debugging, which is very good to debug TestStand sequence and CVI DLL, advantageous if I need to update CVI code and do not have to launch TestStand again and again after new CVI code is builded. Hovewer, to attach CVI DLL to a process is always necessary to do next steps: Run -> Attach to Process…, then select process from a list (seqedit.exe) and click OK. I would appreciate similar option as “Specify Executable to Debug…” or key shortcut to attach process directly to TestStand in one click or using simple key shortcut.

If the thread that FileSelectPopup (and similar) is accessed is multithreaded, wacky things happen. The programmer can fix this by creating a new thread that is itself not multithreaded and pass information back to the current threrad. It would be helpful if the current functions were designed to default to create such a thread, return the value(s), and garbage collect removing the programmer from the loop.

In the case of MultiFileSelectPopup, it is not clear to me what would be the best practice given the unknown number of results. I guess one could assume a limit for the number of results that may change as the Windows API does.

Other possible solutions can include an added parameter (variable switch) or with a whole new function. I could see the default case as an effective solution for legacy code that is partially refactored for multithreaded performance.

Right now if multiple controls are selected you cannot jump to the code with "View control callback" menu option or Ctrl+B accelerator even if they have the same callback. It could be handy to be permitted to go to source if selected controls have the same callback.

Consider this scenario:

On a panel you create two buttons, select both of them and edit their properties assigning a (unique) callback to both. Next with both controls selected you generate the callback using "Generate Control Callback" or Ctrl+G. Now you would like to go and code something in the callback but you're not allowed to: you need multiple clicks to go to source: one click anywhere on the panel to deselect controls, one to select one of the buttons and finally the right click or accelerator key. Not very handy...

Size of UI Controls

This issue is that old that we all forgot about it...

But this thread brought it back to my attention and I'd like to suggest two improvements:

Setting the width or the height of a control does not always succeed because there are limitations concerning the minimum and maximum size.

Suggestion 1:

If a function fails it should return a warning. However, calling e.g. status = SetCtrlAttribute ( panel_handle, PANEL_RING, ATTR_WIDTH, 5 ) returns success (0) even though the width of the ring control will be much larger than 5 pixels. For checkboxes, the situation is even worse because checkboxes are drawn right aligned to a transparent rectangular frame. So calling status = SetCtrlAttribute ( panel_handle, PANEL_CHECKBOX, ATTR_WIDTH, 500 ) will result in a transparent drawing rectangle of width of 500 but with the checkbox size remaining at the default size. Since the checkbox is drawn right aligned to this transparent frame the checkbox eventually may disappear from the panel (setting the width to say 10000 will not draw anything).

Suggestion 2:

Complement the documentation, the idea is given below:

Constant: ATTR_WIDTH
Data Type: int
Description: The width of the control body in pixels.
Valid Range: 0 to 32767
Control Type Restrictions: Not valid for controls of type CTRL_VERTICAL_SPLITTER and CTRL_VERTICAL_SPLITTER_LS

For checkboxes, the minimum size is ... pixels, and the maximum size is ... pixels.

For ring controls, the minimum size is ... pixels.

...
LabWindows/CVI Compatibility: LabWindows/CVI 3.0 and later

Control Types: All

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While editing the code, pressing Ctrl+Shift+U or selecting Right-Click+Find UI object jumps directly to the object identified in the code (either the control constant name or the associated callback name).

This works well if the control is on a single panel: the correct panel is shown in the working area of the editor scrolling through the file if needed. If the target control is on page of a tab control, however, the UIR editor opens in the upper left corner of the UIR file; actually the correct control is selected on the tab page, but if it is located out of the editor screen area in the UIR file you need to manually scroll right- and/or downward to show it.

Please correct it: it's not always obvious where the target control is located in the UIR file, wespecially if this one is rather complex, with several panels/controls.

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

Improved Array Display

In CVI 2013 the array display has changed (for the worse, in my opinion).

There are two minor inconveniences and one acute shortage I would like to see improved (hopefully prior to CVI2020 )

First, the right click context menu: If I want to see values of a numerical array, it offers a 'Graphical Array View' but no 'Array View', so one first has to chose 'View Variable Value' and then 'Array Display' - maybe one could save one step and already provide the 'Array Display' in the first case...?

Second, the new Array View table still is very slow, not extremely slow as prior to SP1 but still very slow...

Most importantly, at present it is impossible to debug large arrays, large meaning arrays with more than 10000 elements. The current implementation requires to select a slice of data - but this makes it impossible to check or compare say array indices 5, 10005, and 20005...

Of course I agree that there is no need to simultaneously see more than 10000 data values - but why not have a table with say 100 rows that can be turned over, e.g. displaying either elements 1-100, 101-200, ... this way one could access and inspect all array values...

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LabWindows/CVI Idea Exchange

Improved error reporting

Provide eventdata for numeric controls and EVENT_DATA_CHANGED

From UI editor to UI browser

Implement DPI scaling similar to 'Scale Contents on Resize'

Give the programmer control over DPI scaling

Provide Functions to Programmatically Interact with the GAC

Knowledge base Vs forum

Can I convert a LabVIEW Front Panel into a LabWindows / CVI User Interface File ?

Find Variable Info When In Release Build

Tabbed Search Results

Auto bracket closing

Small improvement to automate debugging option in CVI 2013

Allow setting text attributes on multiple controls at a time

Recode FileSelectPopup, MultiFileSelectPopup, DirSelectPopup (and extended variants) to be unaffected by the MTA setting of the current environment.

Enable "View control callback" when multiple controls with the same callback are selected

Size of UI Controls

Correctly show control on a tab page when coming from source code

Consistent Data Types aka Quality Control

Improvement needed on "Attach controls" function for splitter controls

Improved Array Display