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iEmilie: I haven't really been worried about the "hate LV" blog post. I kind of enjoy reading it. In my eyes, LabVIEW seems to come out pretty well in that thread. I figure there's always going to be someone angry at us, so the existence of the thread itself doesn't bother me. What I like is that in all of the pro-LV comments, whether from NI or not, people reply with calmness, reasonableness and helpful advice. I've read that thread a few times over the years and thought perhaps we should start an advertising campaign: "LabVIEW: Using it will make you a nicer person." :-) Various folks have said that reading that post was deflating. It shouldn't be. My list of "things I hate about LabVIEW" would be waaaaay more than just 10 things, and I guarantee some of them are far blacker marks against us than anything jshoer mentions. I cannot believe how incredibly stupid we have been over the years on some features (yes, I include features I created and now regret), and how long it is taking us to get certain upgrades. But I don't view these deficiencies as reasons to be depressed. LabVIEW is a growing language, adapting over 25 years to the changing technologies and customer bases. Doing what no one has ever done before sometimes means you get a less than optimal solution and you have to fix it up in round 2. Do we have more we can do? Yes. And we continue to work to improve. But the backbone of LabVIEW remains strong. Graphics is the only manageable way to express parallelism, and parallelism is the name of the game in the future. Have you guys seen the parallel keywords that Microsoft has been introducing into the other languages lately? Everything needs to be parallel, but procedural programming is a dead end. There is only so far you can go with compiler analysis of procedural code and manual control of mutexes before you hit a wall and flat out say, "No, I need a system that is designed for multicore from the outset." Between our parallel expression on the desktop and our ability to target FPGAs, I'm thrilled about LV's future, and all the complaining is just the list of tasks we need to be tackling on our way there. When I started at NI, on my first day, I saw a sign by Jeff K's desk: "You know you have built a successful product when people use it for things you never intended and criticize you for being short sighted." The "hate LV" post is just one of the sign posts of our success.

Has anyone using Mecurial been able to get merging working with Labview 2011? If so could you please walk me through how you did it? I've been trying to switch from SVN to Mercurial and getting merging working is my last hurdle. I've installed LVMergeHG and I have it specified as the tool to use for 3-way merging in the Hg global settings. When I open the TortoiseHg Workbench window I can see that I have a branch that I want to merge back into the main trunk. If I select the 'Diff to local..." option, LVDiff runs and I can see the to VI's I want to merge together. If I select the 'Merge with local" option I get a popup window, Prepare to merge, that shows info on the two VI's I want to merge. When I continue by clicking the 'Next' button I get the following: % hg --repository C:\Documents and Settings\D\Desktop\ZZ merge --verbose --tool=internal:fail 6 resolving manifests 0 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 1 files unresolved use 'hg resolve' to retry unresolved file merges or 'hg update -C .' to abandon [command returned code 1 Mon Apr 09 16:33:47 2012] I can't see anything that looks like LVMerge is trying to run. I'm sure I'm probably doing some wrong or don't have something setup correctly. Any ideas?

I usually buy the "it is too complicated for the masses" argument until I try using XControls. Compared to those XNodes are a walk in the park.

I agree with your conclusion. I don't think these can ever be out of order because LV has to recognize the click (Mouse Down) before it can react (Shortcut Menu). Off topic, but shouldn't your username be while(imstuck)? Is imstuck iterable?

Just want to chime in here – I’m NI’s social business manager and a stakeholder in LabVIEW’s brand reputation on the social web. It’s my job to tune into online conversations that mention LabVIEW and help advise on why/how NI may need to take any direct action. The infamous LabVIEW hate blog post you guys found provides a fascinating case study for how one simple complaint on an obscure blog about nothing can turn into a brand reputation crisis. You’ve noticed that Todd Sierer chimed in on the blog several years ago. Little did we know the blog comments would continue to snowball into something that now has 131 comments and counting. Today, this blog post appears in top organic search results for “LabVIEW+alternatives” and “LabVIEW+hate." More recently, I recruited our VP from LabVIEW R&D to chime in. His post is worth the read – I personally know he spent quite some time putting it together. His words provide the most current glimpse into the state of LabVIEW and where David personally would like to see it headed. Take a look. http://jshoer.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/why-i-hate-despise-detest-and-loathe-labview/#comment-3610 The negative comments on the blog are extremely deflating to any LabVIEW brand advocate like myself. I’d agree that most of them are rabid, yet insubstantial complaints because of frustrations stemming from the fact that they simply don’t understand how to effectively use LabVIEW (and I’m not insinuating that it’s completely their faults…NI needs to do a lot more to set the right expectations with new users and help build proficiency). But I’m also a realist and like it or not, we’ve entered the age of the social web, where anyone can say anything and get heard. For NI, it’s a huge opportunity and huge liability all at the same time. What gives me hope: This LAVA thread is listed as the #1 organic search result in Google for “LabVIEW hate” and I’d much rather someone find this thread than the blog post. You guys have taken time to provide thoughtful, constructive feedback about LabVIEW that would actually be helpful for someone considering the tool. Not all of it’s good and that’s ok. That’s what people need to hear. And that’s what NI need’s to hear too. Rest assured: it’s your feedback that we’ll actually take action on. But I just wanted to thank you all for caring enough about LabVIEW to examine and explain how we can continue to make it better, in a meaningful way. This LAVA thread helps me sleep better at night. So thanks for the extra winks of sleep.

Okie... try this. The palette is in User Library -> LavaCR. Code is in vi.lib\addons\_LavaCR\Tree Control API. (The original Library is in 8.2. I had to recompile to 8.6.) lava_lib_tree_control_api-1.0.1-1.vip