LabWindows/CVI Idea Exchange

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Put the X on the tab it goes with.

This X just closes out of the tab that is on top.

Pretty much every other program with tabs has the X on the tab you’re closing out of. The current placement makes me hesitate every time, because it feels like you’re X-ing out of the entire code-viewing pane, not just the single file you want to close.

It’s also not consistent with the rest of the environment.

For example, in the pane on the bottom in the screenshot above, “Threads” and “Wa tch” look like two tabs, but clicking the X in that pane causes the entire pane to disappear rather than just closing the tab that is on top.

LabWindows/CVI lags behind the more recent developments in its programming language, C. At present, it only partially supports the C99 standard, not to mention the improved Unicode support of the current standard, C11.

Since odds are that Unicode finally will be supported in a future version of LabWindows/CVI, this might be a good opportunity to also ask for support of the current standard of CVI's programming language, C11, allowing the use of UTF encoded strings and also including updated libraries (e.g., supporting complex or long long) and debugging tools (data tooltips and variable view supporting complex numbers, for example). It also would help to improve C/C++ compatibility for programs that use complex floating-point values.

I really would appreciate it if the LabWindows/CVI project will show some strong signs of development and accompany us for the next 30 years, too.

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NI is not a C/C++ Editor-Debugger company. And, it will never be able to invest the man power needed to get there. NIs strengths are its Instrument UIs, its libraries, and it's visual application UI pieces. The LabWindows/CVI tool looks and feels like tools from the mid 90's (ie. like an old Borland C editor, but even less featured). It lacks the toolset found in VisualStudios, NetBeans, and Eclipse. And, it will always be behind.

The Verigy93k tester was like this several years ago. They wrote their own C/C++ editor, and it was at a mid 80's level. When a team was asked to rewrite the UI and bring it up to date, they made a novel choice (they recognized that they were not a UI platform / editor company), and they moved their product under Eclipse. Teradyne Flex did something similar a year or two later moving under Excel and Visual Studio. The thing is this, both companies realized that they could make more money focusing on their real strength. They added libraries and apis to work in the platforms framework, and changed/adapted the platform framework to work for them. ie. Teradynes Flex test tool does not say "Excel/Visual Studio", it says it is a Teradyne product based on MS Excel and VS. And, they have adapted the platform to their needs adding on the extra Windows/UIs/... to meet their needs. Same with the Verigy 93K.

In Teradynes case, they went back to the drawing board. So, we will ignore this (even with their success). In Verigys case, all their existing APIs worked in the new platform, and the user didn't need to change anything when they upgraded. But, suddenly the Editor and Debugger were up to date, with latest greatest features. It was a huge change overnight.

LabWindows really should make a shift to Eclipse. Keep your old legacy stuff at first, but working under Eclipse. Add in "Views" and "Tools" to supplement what Eclipse doesn't give you for free. And, remove unwanted or confusing plugins from the eclipse base. (This is what advantest did.) Leave in features that make Eclipse great, like error view, and the ability to have several "perspectives". And really focus the man power into making a product that will blow the others out of the water. NI has what it takes to make great Instrument editing/debugging windows in Eclipse. But, NI doesn't have the 1,000's of people and millions of man hours required to make an Editor/Debugger that will compare to the Eclipses/VisualStudios of the world. As a business they should focus on what will make them a differentiator, and reuse what is accepted and common.

Anyway. My 2 cents on how you could really improve LabWindows in a few short months. (Note: Verigy spent all of 9 months and 9 engineers on their C/C++ integration into eclipse... I know... I was there at the time.) If you took the LabWindows team, and a year or two... Imagine how much better of a job you could do.

Summary:

Display more struct member information during source editing and during debug.

Description:

While editing source code, CVI only displays the struct members, but no information regarding the type of the member (or declaration information, line file and line).

Add a tooltip to the right of the pop-up displaying the struct members in the source editor to display this information. Similar to this picture:

Also add support for displaying nested structs and even display the member values while debugging, in form of a tree, when execution is suspended (CVI currently only displays the memory address of that struct variable).

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We have recently dropped CVI (as of 2009) as an option for use with our many data visualization applications. The graphic performance is just too slow and clunky to put up with any longer and gets worse as we add features or try to make 'native looking' applications (that resize, animate, etc).

Things like dragging/updating cursors is noticably clunky when you have more than one graph updating (linked cursors across more than one graph).

Updating datasets in large tables is slow enough to watch it step through the rows. Even using suggest tips like using ATTR_CTRL_VAL instead of SetTableCellVal, when a large table has to update... it's painfully noticeable. Basically any operation that updates a large portion of the UI.

Another example, try to resize and move controls (as most other applications do) on the EVENT_PANEL_SIZING?

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that CVI doesn't use any graphics card acceleration? since workstation or netbook doesn't seem to make much difference in graphic performance.

Our clients notice when our applications look 'clunky' and 'slow' when compared to smooth, responsive apps/interfaces from competitors. It's often the little things that make a big difference in appearance.

Greg

VSCode IDE extension

Longer panel name and control names

At the moment the maximum panel and control name length is limitted to 32, if you set them programmatically.

Because of longer customer system signal names it is not possible to use them directly as control names. If the maximum length could be raised to 64 or to the maximum label length, it would help to avoid to generate new control names and the additional mapping between costumer system signal names and the generated control names in the test environment.

In CVI there are two kind of buttons:

the classic text button (i.e. a button with a text where you can't insert an image)
the picture button (i.e. a button with an image where you can't add a text)

But if you try to design a modern interface (like the MS Outlook 2010 ribbon, for example) you need a button where you can have both

an image statically or dynamically loaded from file)
a text string localized through the UIR localizer

Even in the new CVI 2010 SP1 there isn't a convenient workaround (see here, for example).

In LabVIEW, otherwise, this kind of buttons can be easily created.

An interesting feature would be also a setting to set the text position referred to the picture (top, bottom, left, right).

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At present, autoscaling works with respect to the full provided data set, i.e. if all data are shown on the graph.

If say the X axis is set to manual scaling such that only a subset of all data is plotted, autoscaling of the Y axis still considers all data even if they are not shown, see the discussion here.

Hence it is suggested to provide an additional auto scaling mode which considers only the data actually visible on the graph, say VAL_AUTOSCALE_VISIBLE_DATA, complementing the current VAL_AUTOSCALE which actually is a VAL_AUTOSCALE_ALL_DATA

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I know we used to have this web server feature 6-7 years ago.

I would request a function where we can export designated panel which user can control from web. Also provides an option to have read only or read/write access. Also password options.

Something like this.

ExportPanelToWebServer (panelHandle, READ_ONLY_FLAG, PASSWORD_FLAG, PASSWORD);

//This starts web server automatically and ready for connection on port 80.

This opens door to lots of applications which requires web control. I think LabVIEW has similar feature. (Web publishing tool)

we are daily dealing with "constant name" field's values that canNOT exceed 21 characters due to restriction on labwindows/CVI.

even the latest CVI/2009 SP1 v9.1.1 (450) has this restriction.

this is very tedious because our software makes use of this value to make cross searches in the registers' table of our component.

as such, if the "constant name" field's value must be trimmed down to <=21 chars to comply with CVI restriction above, this makes the cross-search unusable.

please increase this limit up to 32 chars (at least).

Pascal Janin

STMicro Grenoble France.

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I want to be able to do the following:

Right-click on a control on my user interface and select “Add Event Case to Control Callback” (if a callback function already exists)
CVI brings up a dialog similar to what you see at Code>>Preferences>>Default Events to select an event for that control
Check the box for one or more events for that control, click OK, then
Have CVI find the existing control callback function and add a case to the switch statement for each event I checked

If you haven’t written any code in the callback already, you can just change the default events and re-generate (replace) the control callback.

However, if you have already written code for one event case, the only way I can find to add an event case is to do it manually. I go to Code>>Preferences>>Default Events or use the Operate tool to look for the constant name of the event that I am interested in, then I go back to my code and manually type out “case EVENT_CONSTANT_NAME: break;” with the name of the event and hope I remember it correctly and spell it right.

CVI is all about minimizing user errors and reducing development time by, you know, not making you type things out yourself, so I think this functionality would be a useful addition.

Following this idea already implemented, it could be good to add up/down keys to rows and columns selectors.

At present, if the table is in hot or normal mode you can click on a cell in the table preview in the Quick Edit window to select the corresponding row/column: going to editing them is made easy this way. However, if the table is in indicator mode you cannot click on the cella to select row and column. The same applies if you want to reach a column/row out of visible area of the table: the only solution to that is to double click on the column or row selector and type in the number you want. Not easy nor fast, and prone to errors. Much better to click on a button and increment / decrement the active column index

I'm thinking to something like that:

Summary:

Improve the Breakpoints Window, so that breakpoints can be more easily managed.

Description:

1. Change the Breakpoints Window, from a modal dialog to a dockable window (similar to the Watch Window). Debugging can be more easy this way.

2. Allow breakpoints to be grouped, disabled/enabled and edited in user defined categories. This allows users to easily collectively manage several breakpoints at a time. It also helps the user to logically group breakpoints, depending on various issues issues that he might be working on.

3. Breakpoints could also be sorted from a pop-up menu by filename, line, hit count, etc.

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Hello,

imho the nice tool tips feature provided by the Programmer's Toolbox leads a miserable existence, because it is extra effort integrating it into a GUI.

I would love to see the tool tips integrated into the IDE, that is, when editing a control in the GUI editor, I would like to be able to also set the tool tips text and if it is initially enabled, just like it is possible to enter a control label text. This would include moving the tool tips from the Toolbox to the regular user interface library.

Many Thanks!

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Adding C++ programming abilities to CVI

Customer who has used CVI for years and likes it was looking a Mstudio for the reason that a lot of his new engineers can't or don't do the regular C programming. He likes Mstudio as an idea but, with the extra cost of adding MS Visual Studio and dealing with a they support/We support issues of having two SW pkg from 2 different companies gives him pause about purchasing. He stated he likes CVI because if there is an issue (even if rare) he know that NI will help to figure it out. I let him know I'd provide the feedback.

When operating graphs in Labview, it is easy to change the scale of an axis of a graph (at runtime): to change e.g. the maximum value, you select the current maximum value with your mouse, type in the maximum number you want and hit enter. To achieve the same in Labwindows, you have to use a numeric control and a button, which is a bit cumbersome. The same applies for zooming: In Labview, you can click a small button attached to the graph and select the way you want to zoom, and then just use the mouse. In Labwindows, you have to know that zooming is done using the ctrl button, ctrl+space restores the previous setting, etc. It would also be nice to be able to enable autoscale by right-clicking on an axis and having a popup menu which allows to do so (just like in Labview). And if the user changes e.g. the maximum value while autoscale is enabled, it would be nice to automatically disable autoscale (unlike in Labview).

So in general, it would be nice to have more comfort in operating graph controls.

Thanks.

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Seriously, NI should look over the newer Visual Studio IDE's as well as NetBeans for some good ideas ...

Here's a few:

1. When using the F2 function to find a previously marked spot, you can't easily look for the next bookmark going backwards or restricitng the search to the current module. You can in Viusal Studio.

2. There's no clue offered for the extent of a block - other IDE's either backlight the match braces (VS 2008) or draw vertical lines showing the block extent (a popular VB add-in tool does this).

3. Refine the search selection to be current module, current project, or current workspace ...

4. Allow concurrent builds of multiple projects within a workspace - VS 2008 allows this, in fact, the default is to build everything in the current solution (solution = workspace).

5. Allow toggled commenting of multiple lines of selected text, rather than the "exclude" option that won't let you save excluded lines without commenting them - then the IDE lets you comment them, but not until then. Same thing with un-comment.

6. Implement a lazy background re-compile that re-compiles as you type - saves you a jillion CTRL-K keystrokes to do it yourself. Couple this with near real time notification of compile errors as you type.

7. Fix the &*!)$@^ CVI linker to allow 16 byte alignment.

8. Implement full C99 (MS hasn't done this though and apparently never will).

9. Dim conditionally compiled source that isn't going to compile - nothing is more irritating to me when editing than forcing yourself to ignore conditionally compiled code that's not going to compile. It's tricky to make this work right but it'd stil be worth a try. VS 2008 kind of does this.

10. Provide a pull down menu of functions within a module - this is better than the CVI source browser which is a PITA to use - ti's no wonder to me that this is the most requested improvement so far.

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LabWindows/CVI Idea Exchange

Put the X on the tab it goes with.

Support the current standard for the C programming language, C11

More predefined command buttons

Make the change to Eclipse (or some other common framework platform)

Display More Information About Struct Members

Improved/Accelerated Graphic Performance

VSCode IDE extension

Longer panel name and control names

A new "Picture and Text" Command Button

Provide new scaling mode (VAL_AUTOSCALE_VISIBLE_DATA) for SetAxisScalingMode

Control Labwindows/CVI panel from web browser.

remove restriction of max. 21 characters on "constant name" values

Add the functionality to "Add Event Case" to existing control callbacks

Table editor: add up/down keys to row/col selectors

Improve Breakpoints Window

integrate tooltips into GUI editor

Adding C++ programming abilities to CVI

Improve comfort when working with graphs

Improved DirSelectPopup function

Implement a bunch of the Visual Studio 2008 editor features in the CVI editor ;-)