Selectable direction of stacked shift registers

[SteenSchmidt]

Hi,

Stacked shift registers always has the most recent value at the top, no matter in which direction you start your mouse drag on the shift register node:

Sometimes it could be more optimal to reverse the stacked shift register direction, just for the sake of neat wiring. In that case it would also be necessary with a visual aid (in addition to the tooltip which isn't visible unless you hover your mouse over the object) telling you which is the most recent value; the one at the top or the one at the bottom:

This "dimming" of the older values in the stacked shift register also makes it easier to tell a stacked shift register apart from ordinary shift register that just happen to be very close together.

Cheers,

Steen

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I would be resistant to making the direction change. Stacked shift registers are a rare enough used feature that anything that changes the semantic meaning (i.e. that the top is the most recent value and the bottom is the least recent) makes it that much harder to read and understand what a diagram is doing.

The idea of making a stack of shiftregisters visually distinct from a plain shift register is a good thought. Dimming probably isn't the right tool as that indicates "disabled" or "non-functional" for most aspects of the diagram. I'd probably just delete the bars in between the shift registers so that there's a single outline around all the arrows.

[SteenSchmidt]

Good points. I agree removing the bars instead of dimming is a better idea:

I'm in favor of changing the idea to one that entails the above optimization exclusively.

Edit: It hits me that this change to the graphic representation of stacked shift registers actually removed the noise that made it hard(ish) for me to remember which one in the register stack was i-1 etc. Somehow it's much clearer now how to "follow the arrows" around the loop border toward older values...

/Steen

[crossrulz]

I'm giving kudos to this new picture with the removed bars.  I'm not in favor of the "reversed" expansion.

[Intaris]

Kudos for the purely aesthetic change....

[SteenSchmidt]

Hi guys,

I've extracted the artwork improvement into its own separate idea for it to not get lost here. You can transplant your kudo to there if it was given solely on basis of the artwork.

I've thought it through and I now agree 100% with Mr. Mercer that it's probably a bad idea to have two different directions on the stacked shift register - I hereby withdraw this idea.

Thanks for your feedback as always!

/Steen

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 7 kudos within 7 years after posting will be automatically declined.