LabWindows/CVI Idea Exchange

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Quite often I need to look at one project source code while working on a second one

So, I use Windows File Explorer, find my project of interrest then double click on the .cws file

In this case, CVI load the cws file in the running instance of the IDE

This is not really what I want

I would like CVI opens the workspace in a new instance of the IDE (similar to what is done when, in a function panel help, you click on the "open sample code" button)

For what I remember I believe the above behavior is the one adopted by Visual Studio Express 2013

So far, I must remember to run a second instance of CVI first and then drag'n drop the cws file

Regards, Philippe

PS : drag'n drop a .cws or .prj should work on the CVI Welcome page

The option tooltip is very good feature what is the problem is it is only for the controls. If I want to show tooltip for listbox then it is fine but what if someone wants to show tooltip for active rows. It simply doesn't.

This is very basic but one of the disadvantage of labview over .NET.

This needs to be fixed

The functions available today are OK in terms of functionality but limited in terms of syntax/grammar

For example :

No support for multiline patterns
No support for '\s' in patterns
No support for [:alnum:] in patterns
No Posix conformance (ISO/IEC 9945-2:1993 for example)
No way to select among various syntaxes (grep, awk, ECMAScript...)
At least the ECMAScript grammar should be fully supported

I would like to propose to change the Regular Expression compiler with a brand new one

Keep the existing API (but support much better grammar)

Extend the API of the current intrument driver if needed or if it make sense (a Find/Replace function could be a nice for example)

Philippe

In the .NET Controller creator, it would be nice:

to be able to give a pre-defined list of the only classes it is useful to wrap,
or that CVI memorizes the already checked classes it is useful to wrap

in order to generate the wrapper quickly.

Because it is very boring to have to regularly check manually only 22 classes among plenty of not collapsed classes.

a screenshot of the CVI dotNET Controller wizard.png

Note: I check only desired classes to reduce the compilation time of the wrapper (which is very big with all its classes: 350 000 lines of code in the resulting C file!), as suggested by the CVI manual.

Thanks.

Beautify Variable View

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CVI provides the ability to use syntax coloring (which is nice )

Right now, C keywords share one color - these keywords include the data types int, double, ...

Unfortunately, the boolean types (bool defined by stdbool.h), including the macros true and false, and the size and pointer difference types are not included, e.g. size_t, intptr_t, ...

This is not a problem because CVI also allows adding user-defined tokens for coloring, it even provides the option to add the VISA types.

In that sense we have the possibility to have core and extra types marked in two different colors - which is also nice.

Now I'd like to mark (my) constants as well, in a different color, and this is not possible.

My suggestion thus is to add a second group of user tokens, which can be colored differently.

Thanks

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Editting Tab Order and dimmed controls

Zoom .uir panel

SetAnnotationAttribute permits you to pass -1 in AnnotationIndex parameter to apply the attribute to all annotations on the graph, while SetCursorAttribute does not. It would be good that this command too permits someway to operate on all cursors in a single pass.

As an example, when I want to print a graph on a black-and-white printer I prepare the control for this changing all elements to black.

I can use a single instruction for annotations:

SetAnnotationAttribute (panelHandle, PANEL_GRAPH, -1, ATTR_ANNOTATION_CAPTION_COLOR, VAL_BLACK);

On the other hand, I need to iterate on all elements for cursors

GetCtrlAttribute (panelHandle, PANEL_GRAPH, ATTR_NUM_CURSORS, &numCursors);
for (k = 1; k <= numCursors; k++) SetCursorAttribute (panelHandle, PANEL_GRAPH, k, ATTR_CURSOR_COLOR, VAL_BLACK);

There is an option to display the default display format for integers and floating point, but no such option to set the default format for
"String Display" or "Array display". Strangely, "Array display" shows my arrays as decimal numbers even though I have the default display format for integers set to Hex.

Ideally, I would like to be able to set them separately for char and unsigned char strings. For example:
char strings I prefer to display as Ascii, null-terminated strings (the current default).
Unsigned char strings I prefer to display in Hexadecimal, with Options==Display Entire buffer. This is because my unsigned char strings are actually arrays of bytes.

I've been using CVI for a long time and it's frustrating to setup these options each and every time I look at one of my unsigned char strings. Even if it can't be setup separately for signed/unsigned chars, I would like the option to set some sort of default.

Another aside, would it be possible to display the array/string as hex characters with the Ascii equivalent just below it? A dual display would be even nicer!

Hello,

I don't know if it is possible technically but from a user's perspective it would be convenient for debugging a program (in debug configuration) if the UI constants could be provided in the data tooltips, too. Right now, if something is wrong with my UI I will have to do a lot of detective work to find out which control / control attribute is the problematic one...

Example: Consider the code

SetCtrlAttribute ( panel_handle, control_id, control_attribute, attribute_value );

Right now, if I hover over attribute_value, the tooltip will display something like "attribute_value = 24064". Then I will need to look up userint.h to find out which attribute value this is ( ATTR_CTRL_VAL ). It would be more convenient if the tooltip could include this information, too, and display something like "attribute_value = 24064 ( ATTR_CTRL_VAL )"

The same holds for control_id, because a number such as 14 will not immediately help me - I will have to go through the corresponding include file to find the respective UI control (e.g. TABPANEL_2_NUMERIC ).

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The FileSelectPopup dialog in LabWindows/CVI does not allow the programmer to set attributes for the dialog, such as sort order for files in the dialog.

Similar functionality already exists for other functions in CVI, such as SetPrintAttribute to set attributes for a file to be printed. It'd be extremely convenient to have a SetFileSelectAttribute with options such as VAL_SORT.

It shouldn't be necessary to set these attributes to use the FileSelectPopup dialog; their use would simply change the settings from their default values.

Thanks,

Daniel E.

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

Release source code to some UI controls

The problem with the CVI standard controls is that once a feature is missing, it's VERY difficult to add for a normal user. What cruel hacks I had to implement to circumvent some limitation (like dynamically overlaying canvas controls over a scrollable table to simulate joined cells) is truly beyond description. Same with graphs controls (try implementing some with five distinct Y axes, fun for the whole family!). I always found you guys to be pretty responsive when it comes to feature requests, but some features are a) so application specific that I don't even dare requesting them and b) even if you'd agree to implement them, it takes about two to three years until they are released and the necessary runtime is deployed worldwide in my company.

So, please consider opening the source code of some of the more complex UI controls (like the table and graph controls), at the very least to some interested users like me (AFAIK my company even has a standing NDA agreement with NI). I already considered doing them from scratch, but then I noticed that I'd even have to re-invent the scroll bars that come with them! This was never a problem with any other platform I had used in the past (like Delphi), because they always came with full source code to the whole library.

CVI Application start as service

Improved 'Find'

Hi,

this is a very tiny suggestion, but still I would consider it a very convenient improvement:

Right now, if I am using the 'Find' command in the IDE with a typo in the search string (this happens frequently...!), press F3, I receive a popup message telling me that the string 'xxx' has no matches. After pressing OK the popup disappears, but also the Find window disappears! So I have to press Ctrl-F again just to correct my search string.

Hence I suggest that in case a search is not successful, (the popup disappears but) the Find window remains open. This is also true if the search was successful, so I would even consider the current behavior inconsistent

Thanks!

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Three ideas for list box control

How about...

- If control mode is indicator set ATTR_HILITE_CURRENT_ITEM to 0 per default

- Provide a code to set the background color of the whole line (from "here" on) instead of just where text is

This would make it far more easy to color alternating lines differently, now you have to append every text with lots of spaces to fake it if you use tabs

- Autoscroll option

Always jump to the last line if a new last one is inserted. Useful for logging purposes

LabWindows/CVI Idea Exchange

While CVI is running, double clicking on a .cws file, CVI should ask if we want a second instance to be opened

Tooltips for active rows in listbox

Improve the regular expression instrument driver to support better grammar

Make the .NET Controller creator more efficient/user friendly with big dlls

Adding default value to description of ATTR_CTRL_MODE

Beautify Variable View

Provide "Undo" for editing menu bars in the UI editor

add a second group of user tokens for syntax coloring

Provide opacity attribute for graph elements

Editting Tab Order and dimmed controls

Zoom .uir panel

Make SetCursorAttribute behave like SetAnnotationAttribute

Please allow setting default display options on Array Display and String display

Better UI debugging: provide constant names

Add a Function to Set Attributes of a File Select Popup Dialog

Release source code to some UI controls

CVI Application start as service

Improved 'Find'

Performing Unit testing within the envirnment

Three ideas for list box control