Split choice of icon and VI description in polymorphic VIs

[SteenSchmidt]

A polymorphic VI always displays input/output labels, captions and tips from the instance VI (makes sense, these aren't defined within the poly-VI). You get a choice of where to get the VI icon from though:

The VI description also follows this selection, which I sometimes find unfortunate. I generally make two kinds of poly-VIs:

1) API or Lib-type poly-VIs, where each function can have very different IO on the con-pane.

2) Type overloading poly-VIs, which contain a bunch of almost identical VIs that only differ in the data type of some "Value" input or output.

In the former case I prefer both VI icon and VI description to come from the instances, but in the latter case I'd like to get the VI icon from the instances and the VI description from the poly-VI (the VI description can be long, only differing maybe in a single sentence, easy to make into a common description for all data types). So in polymorphic VIs I suggest splitting the selection of VI icon and VI description source into two:

Cheers,

Steen

[dthor]

I like it.

Question:

If I had "Show Instance VI Description" selected, and then the instance I chose had a blank description, should LV override it with the Polymorphic description?

Also, should there be an indicator in the context-help / description that tells the user which description he is reading? Specifically an indication that the programmer does not have to write into the description.

[SteenSchmidt]

Am I (almost) the only person in need of different icons but the same description for all instances of some polyVIs?

dthor: Interesting suggestion regarding LV overriding blank descriptions with the polyVI description. I see this actually opening up for the opposite case: You make the generic description that cover 95% of the instances in the PolyVI, and add a VI description only to the few instance VIs that really need a differing description.

Cheers,

Steen

[Darren]

Any idea that has received less than 5 kudos within 5 years after posting will be automatically declined.