Improve cluster reorder and autosizing

[VinnyAstro]

Big clusters that go beyond the limit of the FP are annoying, especially to resize them automatically and reorder the controls.

Here are a couple of improvements that could be made:

• "Reorder controls in cluster..."
  • Allow user to scroll while re-ordering the controls to have access to all elements instead of having to do it in multiple time.
  • Shortcuts like Escape and Enter should respectively cancel-exit and validate-exit the reordering phase
    These are pretty standard shortcuts and already widely used within the Labview environment
• "Autosizing"
  • Autosize to "Compact". Where instead of aligning all element vertically or horizontally only, they would be in the "most compact" (to be defined) possible configuration to simplify the access to all info in the cluster.
    For instance compacted in a square way, sorted by class (Booleans/numerics/strings etc.)
    I understand that this one might be more complex, but it would be really helpful in my opinion
    
  • Less important (to me): In Edit Mode, in case a cluster is autosized to "none" and some items are hidden outside for whatever reason, the developer should be notified somehow. For instance the same way than for strings 
    
  • (In the same case than above, allowing scroll bars could be interesting in some situations.)

-Vincent.

[fefepeto_kb]

I agree with the recommendations in this post, except the compact auto arrangement. That seems counter intuitive to me, since it might mean different things for people. Some examples of possible implementation categories, which might be combined:

• Resize all the controls:
  • to their default size
  • Don't resize controls
• Order controls by:
  • their class
  • their actual size
  • their ID within the cluster (this would be consistent with the other options, but can easily contradict the purpose of Compact)
• Limit the size of the resulting control
  • to the screen resolution
  • to the available space on the front panel
• Enabling scroll bars
  • automatically
  • manually
• resizing the resulting cluster:
  • don't allow (the same way as other auto arrange options, which would be consistent)
  • allow resizing and automatically rearrange the controls inside

My point here, is that compact would be a lot of options, which might be varied in different use cases, even for the same developer, hence the Compact becomes inconsistent and therefor non-intuitive.

[VinnyAstro]

It did cross my mind, I thought it would be a minor issue, as it could "easily" be solved with another menu:
R.Click->Reorder->Compact By->Class/Size/...

But I haven't foreseen so many options and it might be too much indeed.

[Petru_Tarabuta]

+1. "Allow user to scroll while re-ordering the controls to have access to all elements instead of having to do it in multiple time." - Agree 100%. Wished exactly this when facing this issue multiple times in the past.

[wiebe@CARYA]

The scrollbars work*. They just look disabled because they are very dark.

If they were not that dark (there's really no reason) they would be an indicator that there are off screen objects .

* Minor caveat here (aka bug). If the VI's scrollbars are set to 'off while running', they look enabled, but don't work. This is the same for Set Tabbing Order (the SBs don't work if 'off while running' is on). If the scrollbars are completely off, they also don't show. AFAIK, they should show and work when reordering cluster order and tabbing order.

[VinnyAstro]

--

AFAIK, they should show and work when reordering cluster order and tabbing order.

I understand that these are small details, but IMO they add up to an overall experience of using the Labview IDE which can sometimes (like in this case) be frustrating.

[Yamaeda]

I like the Compact idea, but it can be quite hard to implement if controls are very different sizes, like clusters in clusters and String controls expanded to see some text.

[Quiztus2]

I was often in the situation where I would have loved to have a grid alignment, where you could specify the number of columns.

[Henrik_Volkers]

Sometimes I would like to have a simple reorder by name.

This one sadly didn't make it, however a script was provided

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Alphabetically-Reorder-Controls-in-Cluster/idi-p/2112...