Francois Normandin

Hi Durnek, I'm the author of this package. Thanks for your comments. LabVIEW controls support transparency, but you have to make sure your source image is 32-bit PNG (24 bit RGB image + alpha channel). You can do what you want by hand, which is simplest if you have a small set of controls. First, find a drawing software that supports transparency and can output a png. Some people use PowerPoint, GIMP, PAINT.NET, etc. You can search the LAVA forums for some discussion about this. Second, use the control editor (customize button) in edit mode. Drag your image on the front panel of your Customization screen. If you see the white background, then you had a problem saving your PNG correctly with alpha channel. If you see it correctly, then all you need is copy - paste on the control using the right click on the image you wish. That's the easy way to get a transparent control. Check out this nice video by Michael Aivaliotis for a more in-depth comprehension. And here's an example of what you can do with this. If you're more advanturous, there was a discussion lately on programmatically creating controls. I've done it and will release my work soon (I'm polishing the edges...) but you can have a look at Vugie's BitMan in the code repository for manipulating bitmaps (with transparency). Also, read thisdiscussion for more info.

I know I'm late in this topic, but there's a utility in the CR that you can use to ease your pain: LVClass API.

Hi Ton, yeah, don't tell me... that was a mistake. I'll be doing an update soon with the stuff Vugie and Rolf have dug out for the programmatic creation of controls. Those won't be typedef'ed and all icons/text will have been programmatically located, so there won't be any mismatch of a pixel or two here and there as can happen when you do it manually. I actually have real nice series of buttons ready... but they take a few MBs per series and I'm thinking of a way to have it created on the fly like, I don't know, CCT or perhaps a RCF plugins? I'll spend a few nights on that and hopefully I get something useful by Xmas to show off. Anyway, here's a teaser... teasing82.vi Français... François. What's the difference? We're all alike, right?

Hello Bjarne, indeed, you can find those in LV8.x folders. If they exist in LV2009. I haven't found them (or they changed name).

A few comments, unrelated to the Xnode itself: 1- cross-post: where do you want comments on your code? We should probably stick to one thread to gather all comments at the same place. 2- I didn't find the readme file in the zip. 3- And it's password-protected...which indicates you have copyrighted content that you want to protect. It's probably in the readme file, but a license detail would help (how can we use it? At which conditions?)

Hi Paul, I really like your combativity in those lounge subjects... but I can't resist to bite too because I sit on the other side. In Quebec (Canada again), the government introduced a universal childcare system where parents can, for a meager 7$ a day, leave their children in the good care of professionals while they go to work. This measure has grown in popularity so much that A- we need to create hundreds of new childcare centers every year (6 millions population); B- the average price in the private system is 40$ a day; C- after a stagnation of the percentage of women joining the workforce, their number has started to increase again, thus increasing overall productivity and D- there's a baby boom (finally) that's gonna be needed to take care of the babyboomers that will all take their pension soon and will very likely get massively sick in about 20 years. There are also some side effects that are difficult to pinpoint exactly because the causes are multiple, but one can't help to notice that child molestation has dropped steadily since the implantation of those childcare centers.

Paul, I think it's a big leap to think that because a few scientists have deleted data (if these affirmations have not been taken out of context), that all the climate scientists are covering the truth. You find a rotten apple, you expose it and take it out of the basket. You certainly don't throw the whole basket away. Agreed, you can get funded for saying global warming exists. But I'm sure you can get grants for saying the opposite too... if not from government, then from other organizations. It's not all about money. As a guy that works in a research lab, I can tell you that bad ideas (even when funded) have a tendency to die quite fast. The fact that some ideas continue to be funded after so many years means there's credit to them. Scientists are very territorial... that means that the competition (i.e. the other group in that other institute across the ocean...) must have damn good arguments to prevent me from bearing down on them, because after all, I want to be the top guy... since I want the same grant money as the ones they're applying for, I'd better be! And believe me, peer reviewed grants are very competitive. If you come with false pretense or crazy ideas that just don't fit the facts, then you won't get it. (That's another way to look at Darwinism). Yes there are probably more chances to get a grant if you try to find a way to explain climate change than if you try to find a proof it doesn't exist. But scientists are more clever than that. If you don't believe in global warming and still want some grants, apply for a grant to gather some data to explain global warming... and if you were right all along, the data will contradict global warming and you can show the world that you've got some data to corroborate your saying.

With proper acknowledgement, it's gonna be a pleasure... thanks again.

When I feel better, I'll try it. I got swine flu apparently.

I should really have read your post earlier, Ton. At least, I get to use your CCT 2.0. Great work. BTW, the link to the "thank you" page needs to be refreshed (LAVA 1.0). If you can fix it, I'd pay my regards.

On your advice, I checked the hierarchy of vi.lib/Utility/NiReport.llb and I will create two child classes "ooWriter" & "ooCalc" that will inherit from NI_report.lvclass. It should then be only a matter of adding these two choices to the selector enum of "New Report.vi" and voilà. I think that's the spirit behind OOP, isn't it?

I'll be damned. If you can find that document, I'll be sure to read it. I remember seing something about that a while back but can't find it either. I'll start by browsing AQ's posts... Thanks Jon,

You know you're gonna make tons of happy people. I'll be able to automate the UI Tools button creation.

I don't know why, but I missed your answers guys! I guess I should "track" my topics. Thanks for the feedback. I indeed thought I could mirror the NI Report Generation VIs for the Basic Reports palette. The rest of the code would be hidden inside those to control individually cells, paragraphs and graphics. That's the approach I'll take for the first version. Building on that can be transparent for the end-user of the library. Still, I found some bumps in the current implementation of the AODL 1.3 library. Its behavior is not polished to the point where it's as easy as OfficeReport. I'll try to document that a little.

I feel naughty every time I see a coercion dot on my block diagrams and try to get rid of them as often as possible. But there's one case for which I don't understand why there's a coercion dot in the first place: wiring an object to its ultimate ancestor, the LabVIEW object. A child wired to its parent class method will not show the dot, but wiring any object to the LV object terminal will. Would there be an instance when this is necessary to notify us we're about to use the inheritance in a potentially unintended way?

In that perspective, it would mean: to remove from the community*. *Friend classes appear under "Community" access scope.

Yes, version 9.0 is LabVIEW 2009, the newest.

Did you know that "Unfriend" has been chosen the Word of the Year by the "New Oxford American Dictionary".

Congratulations Chris!

Hi Norm, thanks for the comments. Yes, I planned to add all ;)as much as possible of the Nuvola theme icons in there, but the process is long without being able to do that programmatically. Also, I'm putting 100% of my free home time on the Open Office Report Generation (which should come in a few weeks) and then I'll go back to the UI tools copy/paste for buttons. I've already made programmatically all the buttons states in PNG using Vugie's Bitman tools. All remaining is sitting a long night and make it happen. I already received a comment that at least one of my button is misaligned (hover) so I plan to make them all from scratch calculating the exact placement of the icons. Truth be told, I hadn't thought about using something other than linear fade. I'll definitely give it a try and add this option to the UI Tools. I'll take your word on the fact that it's nicer looking... I'll put exponential as the default case and linear as option. If anybody thinks of other fading algorithms they'd like, I can integrate them as well. I'll check on ni.com's suggested features to make sure "scalable graphics" support for button edition is in there (and properly kudoed)...

I'm not sure those are the ones you're referring to. These are Nuvola-style. UI Tools If not, perhaps you've seen them on the NI forums?

Yes. It's essentially what Millikan demonstrated when he calculated the elementary electronic charge. See Millikan Oil-drop experiment.Well, it all depends what you mean by "lots of charges"... If your goal is to control it in 3D, then you'd need a 3-dimensional electric field gradient controller. Are you trying to lift yourself from the ground like a superhero? Wait, I assume you already know how to do that...

Hi LAVAs, I already picked the curiosity of some of you guys with this Open Office Report Generation toolkit. So here is a snapshot of what's gonna be made accessible shortly through the Code Rep. But most importantly, I'd like to know what would be useful for the community. I'm having a design decision to make at the moment and I want to get people's opinions. The toolkit will be based on AODL, a .NET API for Open Document Format. It's still in beta (v1.3) and includes only Text Documents and Spreadsheets, but it's a complete interface. It's a complicated API, but after spendig a few days poking around it, it's a quite simple mechanics. I'm building this toolkit with LVOOP. For the moment, the "Basic" palette is taking form: * Init Document * List Styles * Add Text * Add Table * Add Table of Content * Add Image * Save * Load * Dispose() To be used somehow like this: That's fairly straightforward. Where it gets a little more complicated is that I'd like to propose a true API to extract one part of a document and modify it. For that, each token that is constructed (Content of document) needs to be done by first creating the empty construct with the document reference as input. I haven't found a way yet to create content without first assigning a document reference. (i.e. I would like to find a way to create it with an empty reference and change that reference later on when I decide which document I want to add this content to.) This constraint quickly adds a bad feel to the whole exercise... What a spaghetti! So I might solve this problem by creating an active directory a FGV of current documents references (provided there are many) and each new content class (i.e. Create Empty Table) would be provided a Document Name to search the reference in the directory. This allow addition or modification of content in a State Machine. I can see why some people would not like this idea because it clearly breaks dataflow... but since the .NET API is by-reference, perhaps it's an acceptable compromise. The final toolkit would include some Advanced palette to edit, insert before/after, include content inside other structures recursively, and the like. My initial tests with LVOOP indicate this could be quite versatile and expandable as the AODL (An Open Document Library) is extended. Any thoughts on this? I'd like to hear your design advices as well as any requested features for the first draft. PS: BTW, this AODL API is great. You can create reports without OpenOffice being istalled on the machine! I still haven't looked at the "Save as DOC file" yet, but it shows promises.

That makes me remember this old joke: "If your car stops working and you don't know why, try shutting down the *Windows* and opening them again before you call the garage."

confirmed with Firefox 3.5