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VIPM › Posts › Indicators and Controls not on Connector Pane

suggestion

Indicators and Controls not on Connector Pane

Suggestion shared 4 years ago by Jim Kring
Related Packages: ZAlign
   

Details

Great tool! Where does it put controls and indicators that are not wired to the connector pane?

Sometimes I use these for debugging and keep them off to the side, inside of a frame I label "Debugging Indicators" (or similar)

Comments

Nikolaus Naredi-Rainer Hey Jim, glad you like the tool. For stuff that is not connected on the connector pane it creates a seperate location with the header "locals". Just give it a try, you will notice it immediately.
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 •  Reply • 4 years
BOBILLIER Eric Great tool, but it will be better if "Locals" are in th middle.
 •  Reply • 4 years
Nikolaus Naredi-Rainer Thanks for looking into it and the feedback, Eric. I can't really picture your suggestion. Would it be controls on the left, locals, indicators on the right? Then it would be not intuitive what is connected to the connector pattern, what is not...but I might get your suggestion wrong.
 •  Reply • 4 years
BOBILLIER Eric Hi Nikolaus. Yes it's exactly that Controls on left, Locals in middle and indicators on right. For me it's visualy more representative of how work a Vi, than Input,Output and locals. But it's a point of vue.
 •  Reply • 4 years
Nikolaus Naredi-Rainer Eric, I see your point. If you want you can open an issue on https://github.com/Zuehlke/ZAlign/issues and the next time we have a free slot to work on the tool, we can see if can try to make it configurable.
 •  Reply • 4 years
Jim Kring Great discussion! Yes, I agree that I often put my "locals" in the middle. However, sometimes I put them off to the right, but usually only in these situations: 1) It's a user interface, so I wouldn't be using ZAlign anyway 2) There are lots of "locals" that take up space and it would really clutter things up to put them in the middle (making it too hard to see the actual inputs/outputs). Another thought... I might also like to see the configurability done on a per VI basis. Perhaps the setting could be stored in a scripting "tag" (named variant data associated with the VI), so that next time I ran ZAlign on the VI it remembered the VI's setting. If we did this, then we'd also need some way to change the setting. Or, maybe instead of a tag, the ZAlign tool could just detect that I've re-arranged the FP to put the locals in the middle and leave them there on a subsequent execution of ZAlign.
 •  Reply • 4 years
Nikolaus Naredi-Rainer Hey Jim, these are great ideas! Regarding your point 1): you can use ZAlign on user interfaces. If you select a couple controls and indicators and use ZAlign it will only change those that were selected and shift them out of the visible area. Regarding the middle/side discussion. Wouldn't it be easier to have two distinct commandos to call them easier? Let's say ctrl+a for to the right and ctrl+b for the middle?
 •  Reply • 4 years

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