Darren

QUOTE (ASTDan @ Aug 22 2008, 10:29 AM) I don't know how to control the tip strip from an OS level, but I do have a colleague who didn't like the way control/indicator tip strips behaved, so he made his own. It's a 2D-style string control with a black border and pale yellow background that he shows/hides and programmatically moves around as needed, and looks pretty darn close to what a real tip strip looks like. The only limitation I remember seeing in his implementation was that (obviously) his tip strip couldn't go beyond the bounds of the front panel window, whereas a native tip strip can do this. -D

QUOTE (Michael_Aivaliotis @ Aug 22 2008, 03:08 AM) Let the record show, your honor (yes, I'm assuming Michael is the judge in this case), that I was not defending the appearance of the 3-button dialog VI, I was merely defending the use of a Flat Sequence in a UI VI. AQ made a perfect argument regarding Flat Sequence usage, and I was affirming that argument. -D P.S. - In his defense, though, given the huge amount of initialization required in the 3-button dialog VI, I'm curious how others would design it that it would look so different. Is the issue purely one of modularization? Would y'all be happy if he simply used more subVIs? Because regardless of how it looks, there's no way around the fact that all that code does need to run before you get to the event structure...

QUOTE (normandinf @ Aug 22 2008, 08:11 AM) In LabVIEW 8.6 there is a small set of VIs that deal with VI and object tags. They are located at [LabVIEW 8.6]\vi.lib\UserTags. Let me know if you have any feedback on them. -D

QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Aug 21 2008, 05:17 PM) Not so fast...before the defense rests, you should call your first witness, Darren, who has advocated Flat Sequences as a perfectly legitimate UI programming structure for many years (when was the 7.0 release?), for the very reasons you have cited. -D P.S. - Stacked Sequences, however, are pure evil. Just want to make sure there's no question on that.

QUOTE (martin@aerodynamics @ Aug 20 2008, 07:03 AM) That's correct...it requires the released version of LabVIEW 8.6. -D

QUOTE (crelf @ Aug 19 2008, 02:55 PM) Under the hood is a VI that runs on the target that implements the ladder logic, but the user doesn't have access to that VI. He can, however, add VIs to the rungs of his ladder diagram, and those VIs can do whatever he wants. -D

QUOTE (rayodyne @ Aug 18 2008, 12:42 PM) Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to export the Error List contents. It does seem like a useful suggestion, though...I recommend you submit this idea to the http://digital.ni.com/applications/psc.nsf/default?OpenForm' target="_blank">Product Suggestion Center. -D P.S. - I'm also curious about the broken VIs...were they unbroken in 8.5, but broken in 8.6? What specifically is wrong on their diagrams? Are there toolkits you have installed in 8.5 that you don't have installed in 8.6?

QUOTE (Antoine Châlons @ Aug 18 2008, 01:26 AM) As far as I can tell, it's not in 8.5 or 8.6. There is currently a CAR on the issue (CAR# 113669) that is being investigated by LabVIEW R&D. -D

QUOTE (rayodyne @ Aug 17 2008, 04:17 PM) What "Error List" are you talking about? Can you attach a screenshot? -D

QUOTE (PJM_labview @ Aug 16 2008, 11:01 AM) Awesome! I didn't realize people took pictures. Yeah, that was the robot that the Aggie grad students made. -D

QUOTE (Tom Bress @ Aug 15 2008, 11:01 AM) I play them with the Wiimote...if you eliminate the lag issue as I discussed above, the Wiimote has a surprisingly natural feel when playing the old games. I don't own the Wii classic controller...I have 4 Wiimotes and 2 Nunchuks. At some point I'll probably get a game that requires 4 players to have 4 Nunchuks, but so far, the hardware I have has sufficed. -D

QUOTE (Tom Bress @ Aug 15 2008, 09:08 AM) In no particular order, here are my "Wii Tips": Super Mario Galaxy is one of the best video games I've ever played in my life. If you were a fan of Mario games in the past, this one will completely blow you out of the water. My kids and I were totally addicted to it for the ~2 months it took us to beat the game (twice). Big Brain Academy is a really fun puzzle game. You compete either against 1 other person or you can have teams compete to solve logic/numeric/analysis/observation puzzles as quickly as possible. You definitely want to get Wii Play. It costs $50, but it includes a Wiimote, so it's an efficient way to get another Wiimote and a $10 game that's really pretty good. Wii Play includes more competition-style games (like Wii Sports), but they're only 2 player. I also bought Super Monkey Ball and Mercury Meltdown, but I wasn't impressed with either of those (AQ would disagree with my assessment of the latter). The downloadable games are a blast (from the past). If you have an HDTV you'll want to make sure to configure it for "game mode" (if possible), because there's a fair bit of lag when playing the old skool Nintendo games with the Wiimote. I spent $5 to buy the web browser, and it's really nice too. I've actually browsed LAVA before with it! It's kinda hit-and-miss for playing media (flash, embedded videos), but rock solid for everything else. I also own multiple editions of Guitar Hero, along with Rock Band (did anybody see me vanquish the Guitar Hero robots on the NI Week expo floor?), but I own those for the PS2. They are available for the Wii, though, and if you have a musical side, you'll probably really enjoy them. Guitar Hero has much better game play for guitar, but Rock Band is definitely the best game if you're looking for a multi-player party game experience. -D

Ok, I got a response on the truthiness of what I said: "That is basically true. Some toolkits (SIT, for example) have some shared components that install outside of the LabVIEW folder that might be upgraded and affected. But in general Toolkits and Modules on the DVD only install to 8.6 and won't affect old versions or newer versions. Not all modules and toolkits are on the DVD though, so your mileage may vary for those. As for drivers, the ones on the August 2008 Driver DVD support LabVIEW 7.1.x, 8.2.x, 8.5.x and 8.6." -D

QUOTE (neB @ Aug 12 2008, 10:13 AM) I'm not as familiar with the installers for drivers and modules, but I can almost guarantee that with drivers, the new install will uninstall old stuff just like it always did. I'm not sure about modules. But you should be good with toolkits (VI Analyzer, Report Gen, Internet, Database, etc.) If I had to guess, I'd say modules are probably good, because I think every installer on the LabVIEW Platform DVD will now adhere to the "install only to the current LabVIEW version and don't mess with other stuff" rule that the toolkit installers now abide by. I'll make sure the right NI people see this post so they can correct me if I'm wrong. -D

QUOTE (Ton @ Aug 12 2008, 12:33 AM) Starting with LabVIEW 8.6 and moving forward, a LabVIEW/toolkits install will no longer affect the installs of previous toolkits. So yes, your older toolkits are safe when installing LabVIEW 8.6. -D

QUOTE (ragglefrock @ Aug 11 2008, 01:59 PM) I use SCC in the LabVIEW project, but our server is pretty snappy. I'm not too familiar with LabVIEW launch time speed issues, but I think I've heard people blame slow SCC servers and weird licensing network problems for slow LabVIEW launches in the past. -D

QUOTE (neB @ Aug 11 2008, 12:44 PM) On my 3 GHz, 2 GB RAM machine, here are my times. This is LabVIEW 8.6, pretty much every module and add-on installed (and the default drivers too) from the LabVIEW 8.6 Platform DVD: Load Palettes in Background: LabVIEW launch time - 8 sec Initial Quick Drop launch time - 4 sec Load Palettes on Launch: LabVIEW launch time - 12 sec Initial Quick Drop launch time - 0 sec So I'm seeing that the total time is effectively the same. Note that this is a non-initial launch of LabVIEW after a reboot. I expect the times would be a fair bit higher if this is your first time running LabVIEW after installing it (or after rebooting your machine). Also, if I let LabVIEW sit for a minute after launch, and I'm using "Load Palettes in Background", the first Quick Drop launch only takes about 1 1/2 seconds, as opposed to 4. -D

QUOTE (ragglefrock @ Aug 11 2008, 12:24 PM) Change the setting to "Load Palettes on Launch" if you want all Quick Drop info to be ready to use when LabVIEW launches. Depending on how many toolkits, modules, add-ons, etc. you have installed, your launch time will increase a certain amount. I've never seen a 45-second wait, though. Is your computer reasonably fast? -D

Yes, I encourage all of you to send feedback on this issue (and any others you had at NI Week 2008). My presentation started at 10:30 on Thursday, and the tiny room was completely full by 10:10, with a bunch of people outside trying to get in. They had to kick out some NI employees who were sitting on the floor to make room for paying customers to sit on the floor. I don't know if this is its intended purpose, but it seems to me the NI Week Discussion Forum over at ni.com might be a good central location to submit this feedback. -D

QUOTE (jlokanis @ Aug 9 2008, 12:54 AM) I don't count the Basic programs I wrote on my Atari 400 as a kid, or the Pascal I was required to do in high school. Yes, the Quick Drop window in LabVIEW 8.6 is pure G. The only C work that needed to be done was the addition of a couple of private VI Server properties to give me palette object name information. Those properties were written by the person who was familiar with the palette source code. Oh yeah, and the guy who owns the menu source code added a snippet to launch my Quick Drop VI from the menu (or most commonly, from its menu shortcut key combination). -D

QUOTE (jgcode @ Aug 8 2008, 05:22 PM) I demoed Quick Drop during the Tuesday keynote at NI Week, I used it extensively during the LabVIEW Coding Challenge yesterday at NI Week, and there is a video of me using Quick Drop on the Quick Drop webpage. There's currently an awesome viral video making the rounds of some guy at NI Week who uses Quick Drop to generate beers on his desk, but that one is *not* me. -D

QUOTE (Val Brown @ Aug 8 2008, 02:41 PM) I have never programmed in a text-based language, and I'm the one who wrote Quick Drop! At the end of the day, I have a beautiful, graphical program in front of me, and I was able to create it faster with Quick Drop than I could have with the palettes. That's why I wrote the feature. For me, using the keyboard to instantly drop an object (the name of which I already know) is much faster than trying to find it in the palettes, over and over again. ...and all of my user-defined shortcuts are left-handed, so my right hand rarely needs to leave the mouse when I'm using Quick Drop. -D

QUOTE (neB @ Aug 8 2008, 09:34 AM) As Stephen indicated, you don't need to configure shortcuts (although they are invaluable to me personally). Every single item in your current palette set will be available to drop with Quick Drop. The object names are auto-completed for you as well. On my LabVIEW 8.6 install, merely typing 'fo' and 'wh' are enough to auto complete For Loop and While Loop, respectively. I prefer using shortcuts, though ('fs' and 'ws' for For Loop structure and While Loop structure), since I don't have to worry about some other object appearing in the palettes and screwing up my auto-complete in the future. But I digress... There are three ways to drop an object once Quick Drop is open. Let's say I want to drop an "Add" function: 1. Press Ctrl-Space. Type "add". Press Enter. Quick Drop disappears, and an Add function appears on my cursor. Drop the Add function wherever I want it in my VI. 2. Press Ctrl-Space. Type "add". Double-click on the "Add" function that appears in the name match list below. Quick Drop disappears and an Add function appears on my cursor. Drop the Add function wherever I want it in my VI. 3. Press Ctrl-Space. Type "add". Click in the VI where I want the Add to be. Quick Drop disappears, and the Add is already dropped in the diagram where I clicked. Method #3 is what I use 99% of the time I'm using Quick Drop. I like to call it "Super Quick Drop". I will be posting a nugget on the http://forums.ni.com/' target="_blank">NI Discussion Forums in the near future where I expound on pretty much everything there is to know about Quick Drop. Stay tuned... -D

QUOTE (neB @ Aug 7 2008, 03:15 PM) If you are in fact using LabVIEW 8.6, why are you going to the palettes to drop a For Loop? P.S. - One of your colleagues at NI Week said 'hi' to me today on your behalf, but I forgot already who it was...you'd think the guy who wrote Quick Drop would be better at remembering peoples' *names*... QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Aug 7 2008, 11:33 AM) Which I will be doing for the Mac. See, on the Mac, the shortcut is cmd+shift+space because cmd+space is the shortcut for spotlight. But requiring a double modifier is a real pain for this accelerator. Why didn't we make it ctrl+space on the Mac? I know cmd is our normal modifier, but the ctrl key is available in this case and it seems like a more reasonable choice than adding the shift key. Hmm...you know a message board thread has gotten out of hand when you have to reply two different times to address two entirely different messages in the same thread... If I recall correctly, the Ctrl key cannot currently be assigned to shortcuts in Tools > Options > Menu Shortcuts on the Mac. We didn't have the resources in 8.6 to add this ability, so we did the same thing the Context Help window does on Mac...we used Cmd-Shift as the modifier since the Cmd modifier was already claimed by something in the OS. -D P.S. - What shortcut are you planning on using? Tell me if whatever you choose works well, and I'll start recommending it as an alternative to Mac users.

QUOTE (silmaril @ Aug 7 2008, 01:49 AM) The Report Type enum is required in LabVIEW 8.6, but the enum contents are the same whether or not you have the toolkit installed. So this issue should no longer occur when using a VI on two different systems, one with the toolkit installed and one without. -D