Allow breaking up long wires with labels in each end

[jpa_]

In electrical schematics it is common to break up long wires with a label in each end. I wish this feature was available also in LabView.

The wire should still work in a data-flow way, unlike local variables. It should also be possible to have many connections to the same wire.

[Intaris]

First time I read this I thought yes.  Second time I thought no.  Third time I thought yes again.  It's hard to know where to stand on this idea.

Part of me likes it, but I think it should be a strict 1:1 relationship or at most a 1:n because n:1 or n:n breaks data flow.

Somehow I like it but used without proper "aesthetic" code layout it will quickly become VERY confusing as to what is going on where at what time.

[jpa_]

I would want a 1:n relationship, because often you want to use the same reference in many places. Examples I've seen include open config files, occurrences and tcp connections. The context help should probably list all the places where a label goes, in order to avoid confusion.

[InternationAL]

You could have the ability to double click on the wire continuation label, and then you jump to the remote connection in a 1:1 case.  You get a dialog that pops up in the case of 1:n.  It would be like the search/find dialog, showing you where all the occurrences are.  You could double click on the occurrences to jump to them.

The only possibilities for this are 1:1 and 1:n, and both would be swell to avoid having to wire references all over the place.  I know that LabVIEW allows you to used named references for queues and notifiers and the like, to avoid having to use wires, but this could be a good alternative for a lot of messy wiring jobs.  Kind of like wireless internet for your house, only it's for your block diagram.  Some diagrams are really messy and could use this trick.  If you name the continuation label carefully, you can get some autodocumentation type action going on.  It might even make some diagrams easier to read, at least until you can name wires or attach labels to them, which then comes up on the floating tool tip for the wire.

Message Edited by InternationAL on 06-25-2009 11:55 AM

[muks]

This can be given as an option. Traditionally we have seen wires running all over the place. It would be a little less satisfying in seeing our block diagrams with lesser wires.......

[tst]

I like this idea quite a bit actually. It maintains dataflow without requiring the clutter of wires running all over the place. I'm sure that if it's implemented it would also be abused, but I still think it has some nice potential.

[Former NI Employee MS]

Except for the performance part of it, it looks like locals to me.

And locals are often abused... Remember that "locals are evil" and that debugging/refactoring code with them is really painfull.

So that I don't like this idea.

Message Edited by Mathieu Steiner on 08-15-2009 11:35 AM

[tst]

There is one HUGE difference between this and locals - this is pure dataflow, only without a wire. You don't have the option of race conditions because there can only be one source for the data.

Code which would use this feature could be confusing (wires do make for more explicit code), but would have the advantage of clearing up diagrams where you need to run wires from one place to another just to get the wire there. Assuming these had a right click option "Find Source" or "Find Sinks", they would make following them easier.

[smercurio_fc]

I'm not all that crazy about this idea, despite its upfront appeal. Reminds me too much of looking at electrical schematics, where a wire is broken and a terminal with a label is placed, and you then have to hunt for the other end. It's way too easy for this to get abused.

[tst]

I agree that it has potential for unreadibility (particularly in the wires-affect-execution-order sense), but it should definitely be easier than a schematic - a right click (or even a double click) should be enough to bring you to the source or show you a list of the sinks (if there's more than one sink) which you can Ctrl+G through.

I think that this simplified illustration shows both the potential and some of the problems. It's probably worth checking on a more complex diagram.

[tst]

Another idea - maybe clicking on these terminals would also display a dashed line representing the wire, so that you can look at it when you want, but it's not there most of the time. Maybe you could even have a right click option to have the VI display the ghost wire until told not to.