Tomi Maila

Thanks for all for the suggestions so far. QUOTE (crelf @ Dec 5 2008, 10:30 PM) Crelf, I was browsing the IEEE standards with IEEExplore and didn't find a standard number 1288. Are you confident about the standard number? Tomi

Hi folks, I've been rather inactive lately here on the forums. The reason for this is I'm in a transition phase where I'm leaving my position at the University of Helsinki and moving forward to founding my own company. Related to setting up new business, I'd like to hear what is your preferred LabVIEW development process like? What are the best practices in LabVIEW development process and what are the worst pitfalls. Are you using an agile process, some other kind of iterative process or waterfall model? I'm interested in all the phases of the LabVIEW software development process starting from user requirements, trough software requirements management, the actual coding methods, unit testing, system level testing, hardware testing, integration testing, build process, release process and all the way to release deployment, application update processes and customer feedback collection. Please do not concentrate only on good things. Feel free to raise up also problems in your development process that you think may limit your code quality, consume your resources and slow down your development process. Also tell how you deal with communications trough out your process? I feel this may end up being a long lasting discussion, at least when all of us start to see the pitfalls of our own development processes. The worst mistake we have made so far is related to requirements. We didn't identify and clarify well enough the user requirements for a complicated software project. As a result the developers in the project were not working for a clear goal. The ambiguity in the user requirement lead to unclarity also in the application requirements. The unclarity of the goals not only steered the project to wrong direction but also made developers unmotivated as the goal was not clear enough. Needles to say, this project failed in many ways. Tomi

Sounds like a bug to me. For a work-around, I don't have a mac to test but... We can assume that there is an OS primitive dialog that LabVIEW calls. So try to figure out what the dialog in question is. It may be tk_getSaveFile or something similar. Now check the manual page for the identified OS primitive, how you should pass it the file pattern list and try to mimic it in your LabVIEW file pattern input. I don't know if this helps at all but maybe gives you a little hope.

QUOTE (TobyD @ Nov 4 2008, 04:56 PM) I didn't read well. Register for Events has a remove element in LV 8.6 but Register for Event Callback does not.

I think Remove element was added in 8.5. Maybe you can open the VI in 8.5 or later and save it back to what ever version you are using.

I would do it with Match Regular Expression that you can find in the String menu. Make a regular expression that matches only the number there that you need to remove and then form the new file name from the before match and after match strings. Tomi

Andrey suggested to check for input errors while to user is typing the input. I was initially against this idea as it can be very distracting for the user if an error message is displayed when user is correctly entering a value into a control. However, we can alter the value validation algorithm slightly to be used with update value while typing. We can check if the string user is typing can lead into a valid value while user is typing the value. If not, we display an error message. If the beginning of the string is valid, we should not distract the user but let her continue. However, we should not allow user to continue until the value is fully completed. I edited the example in accordance with these principles. The regular expression for checking partial string is constructed from the regular expression for full strings in the following way. Our full regular expression string consists of several components. A partial string user is typing is valid if it is 1) empty or matches 2) partial first part, 3) first part and partial second part, 4) first and second part and partial third part, and so on. You get the point. The edited example can be downloaded from the blog. QUOTE (AndyDm @ Nov 3 2008, 08:45 PM) Ok. I added this functionality to my modified example as well. Thanks for good feedback. QUOTE (AndyDm @ Nov 3 2008, 08:45 PM) - For "OK" button we will set Return Key for toggle action, and for Cancel - Esc. This can be risky as pressing Esc doesn't in general mean close and loose all my changes. I would force users to actually press cancel button to cancel.

I just posted a new ExpressionFlow article Enhanced user experience with contextual error messages Don't hesitate to comment and discuss here on the forums Tomi

QUOTE (Jim Kring @ Oct 31 2008, 08:45 PM) Any particular reason you do not want to interface the LLRP C libraries?

LOL! I've been away from LAVA for a little while and the discussion has... err... progressed almost beyond alpha strings... I wonder the feelings of those poor NI translators who try to figure out how to translate the new (English?) terms the LabVIEW R&D has come up with this time. -Tomi

QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Oct 11 2008, 03:23 AM) Ok

QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Oct 10 2008, 05:04 PM) Do you mean that you've silently implemented type recursion to LabVIEW that the ExpressionFlow article is about?

QUOTE (JFM @ Sep 20 2008, 10:26 AM) I second JFM here. It is commong that when working on a project, you end up developing reusable code. I think it is a good practice to separate reusable parts of project to their own repositories, when they mature. Then you should build reusable libraries some sort of installable packages and install them into into vi.lib or user.lib to be used in projects. I think currenlty http://jkisoft.com/vipm/' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">JKI Soft VIPM is the best tool for managing reusable libraries. This way you can limit your customers or partners not to have access to the source code of all your reusable libraries but only to the source code relevant to their project. This also forces you to think more of the reusability of software modules and you'll end up working more efficiently in the long run.

I found a comparison chart on subversion hosting providers. Don’t read the chart literally, as most providers do have multiple products and not all products are listed. Rather take it as a list of subversion hosting providers aand check yourself what kind of solutions they provide. Not that many subversion hosting companies provide services for open source projects only.

Toby, that is a good point. However you must also consider if your intellectual property is actually more safe on a managed third party server or on your own server where security issues are patched on a random basis.

SMS Service is a very general word. Do you mean either sending SMS with a GSM modem or interfacing to an operator SMS messaging center and sending/receiving large amounts of messages. I guess the former solution is already discussed. For the latter, install for example Kannel to a unix box and interface Kannel with LabVIEW using simple HTTP requests. http://kannel.org

This is a discussion topic to my latest article Subversion hosting - a simple path to LabVIEW source code control Tomi

QUOTE (PaulG. @ Aug 14 2008, 08:22 PM) Luckily all educated physicists have read their Wheeler and know that small black holes would radiate so much hawking radiation that they would 'evaporate' or explode instantly. Actually I don't think an explosion of a mini black hole would look so much different from what ever happens in a proton collision anyway.

If you're into physics and have not yet seen this awesome video of LHC at CERN, go ahead and click play.

Cool There is one weakness I noticed by inspecting the code. The result will be incorrect if the delay between consequetive calls is more than 2^32 ms.

QUOTE (crelf @ Aug 2 2008, 06:36 PM) I managed to install LV 8.6 on my home computer with (only) LV 8.5.1 installed. I have no NI device drivers installed.

This is not an application modification challenge. However I'd like to see an implementation of some cryptography libraries natively on LabVIEW. Most interesting of those would be a stream chipher library, maybe RC4.

Thanks for catching this major bug AQ! Do you already know if you manage to fix it for the maintenance release of winter 2009? Does anyone come up with a good workaroung?

For those of you who had problems watching the embedded video from Vimeo, the video is now available from YouTube as well.

QUOTE (TobyD @ Jul 9 2008, 06:11 PM) Thanks I was using Vimeo because of the excellent 1280x720p HD quality, as it provides ability to download videos and as some users tend to have problems accessing YouTube because of corporate "security" policies. About green screen, I spent a few weeks painting the ExpressionFlow background to our living room wall You can imagine how lot of and how detailed work that was