Jim Kring

See here: http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/2832

Dave, The OpenG.org discussion forums now have an RSS feed. You'll also notice that the forums have been upgraded. Thanks, -Jim

Tomi, Happy anniversary. You've made many great contributions to the LAVA community this past year and you are a very important part of this community. Keep up the great work! Cheers,

It would be helpful to the process if you are able to post an example that demonstrates the bug so that it may be reproduced. Otherwise, it's a needle in a haystack and probably will never be fixed.

You're welcome. And, to pay us back for all of our hard work, I'm sure you'll share your experience after you've implemented your system.

One pattern that I see in the LabVIEW code that I write, is that the more of a hurry I'm in, the less time I take to straighten my wires. The idea struck me that this might actually be a very useful metric for indicating areas of code that are in need of some clean-up. Of course, this metric would need to be normalized to the total number of nodes in a given diagram -- hence, the Wire Bend to Node Ratio. Ideally, this number would approach zero (no bends). Along those lines there are other metrics that might be useful for measuring how well code conforms to style guidelines. For example, a node alignment metric might also be useful. A node could be considered "aligned" if one of its edges is aligned with the edge of another node. Nodes that were aligned with multiple nodes would be given more weight, on a per node basis. These metrics are just a couple examples of ways to measure good coding style. Has anyone ever tried to measure these, or something similar? They can be easily automated using scripting and tools like VI Analyzer.

Dave: That's great news! Have fun

Dave, I have never seen this error, personally, but I have heard a few reports. I'm the guy who created the dynamicpalette package, so I should be able to help, I hope. The error that you are seeing is a file permission error (error code 8) when trying to "create or replace" the following file: <LabVIEW>\user.lib\_dynamicpalette_dirs\menu_to_dir_map.txt Can you please take a look in this location and see if there is a file there? Is it read-only? Is there anything out of the ordinary? Have you re-tried installing the dynamicpalette package? Have you tried rebooting and then re-installing the dynamicpalette package? Are you running windows as a non-privileged user (non-administrator)? Regarding your question about how OpenG VIs get into the palette, this is a little bit complicated, but I'll try to keep it simple: In LabVIEW 8.x, the dynamicpalette package installs the following file: <LabVIEW>\menus\categories\OpenG.mnu This is the "OpenG" category, that appears in the palette. This menu file is configured to "synchronize" with the following folder: .\user.lib\_dynamicpalette_dirs\OpenG\ This means that any MNU files that appear inside that folder will appear in the OpenG category/subpalette. Each OpenG package that appears in the OpenG category/subpalette installs an MNU file in the above folder. I hope that helps. Thanks, -Jim

And I thought my new 3600x1200 setup was pretty slick.

If you have thoughts, concerns, or feedback about running LabVIEW on Windows Vista, please share them with us. I'm interested to know what the issues are and how to solve them. Thanks,

Michael has just fixed it

Hi Dave. That's a great idea and is certainly on our list of things to do. We're planning a major overhaul of the OpenG forum software and RSS is one of the features that we're adding. Thanks for the feedback and support!

A little googling takes you to the Wikipedia entry for LabVIEW. Recently, this was added: However, it seems that someone removed it, recently, too ;-) Funny thing is that I haven't heard of anyone on the team, and I've been doing LabVIEW and open source since forever. I wonder about whether the current VILab team understands the needs of graphical dataflow programmers well enough to create something that will satesfy our needs (I didn't see any well-known LabVIEW experts on the team). However, I also feel that there are a lot of things that LabVIEW's implementation of graphical programming is lacking and maybe some fresh outside perspective would be useful. It's certainly interesting... [Edit] I guess that they have an NI forum member, Bill Choy, on the team. [Edit] Here's some pure speculation... I wonder if Mathworks is somehow supporting the VILab project. The project team doesn't seem to be a bunch of open source loving computer scientists who are interested in graphical programming. The team doesn't seem to be a bunch of die-hard LabVIEW users. The team states that they are trying to provide a direct alternative to LabVIEW. FFelix Toran Marti (the project lead) has developed in Matlab. The team seems to be very organized which is not typical of an open source project that has no financial backing.

Jimi (and others) FYI, I've added some links in a reply to the licensing post. Thanks,

Jimi, FYI, I've thought a lot about licensing issues (too much time, IMO). I'm not sure if you've seen these (below), but I figured adding these links to the discussion thread might be useful. Applying The LGPL to LabVIEW (origninal OpenG license) The case against LGPL (some discussion at OpenG about the change) Transitioning OpenG libraries from LGPL to BSD license (new OpenG license) Cheers,

David, This looks like it could work well for GObjects, however, I'm trying to set a property on an Application reference. Thanks,

Homework Hustler Heckler!? (HHH) :thumbup:

Ton, I am trying to setting the Application property named "Run Reserve XI Components". Setting this to FALSE, causes XNodes and XControls to be loaded without running the eXternal Interface (XI) (i, the Facade VI of an XControl). This avoids the problem (er... feature) in LabVIEW 8.2 where you cannot perform a Save As on running VIs. The "Run Reserve XI Components" property was introduced in 9.2, so it doesn't exist in 6.1, unfortunately. Thanks, Brian, I think that this solution (packaging up a LabVIEW version support library) would work. I'll think on this and post back with my results, if I go this route. Yes, if you have any feedback for 8.x, we would love to hear it. Currently, the support for all the new stuff (XControls, XNodes, Project Libraries, LVClasses, External Nodes, etc.) is a little sparse. Thanks,

Ton, Thanks for this. I was hoping for something with a little less extra baggage (VITs, etc.) I'm working on OpenG Builder and I'm coding in LabVIEW 6.1 and I need to set an Application Property in LabVIEW 8.2. The current solution is to make dynamic calls to a VI that is written in LabVIEW 8.2 that calls the specific property in property node. Thanks, -Jim

Does anyone know an easy way to set a property by name? For example, if there were a VI Server App method that took an object reference, property name, and property value as arguments. Thanks,

I'm a big fan of the Python programming language/environment and I really like The Zen of Python (by Tim Peters) : If we had a Zen of LabVIEW, what would it be? Here are a few ideas to get things rolling... Straight wires are better than those with with bends Flat sequence structures are better than stacked Always wire error clusters -- inputs and outputs Avoid relying on defaults (e.g., "default" frames in case structures, default tunnel values, default shift register values) Initialize your shift registers (unless you are creating a LV2 global) Required inputs should be marked as "required" Nice icons are worth every minute spent on them (but not every hour spent on them) Please create VI Descriptions and comment your code

I saw something similar to this, during the beta. Open a reference to a VI with the child class datatype on the front panel and then do a get control (object) value as variant. You can then upcast this variant (to more generic class) as the parent class, using the Variant to Data function. I'm pretty sure that this, or some similar variantion will work. Best of luck. [update ==>] I found some of my old notes on this subject, including a screenshot of some concept code (see, below -- there's also a screenshot, but I couldn't find the original VI).

Aitor: This is very cool! great work Adam: Thanks for these! Michael: I think we might be getting to the point where we need an XNodes subforum, with a pinned README topic on how to get started.

I hope so, after all the energy that I've spent trying to convince NI that per-project SCC setting's were necessary