jzoller

Useful *and* fun. Joe Z.

Just a note: read the help on the Linker.Read Info From File if your project includes LVOOP. Joe Z.

No vendors (sorry), but just remember to check your card voltage requirements... From Wikipedia: Joe Z.

Is it all VI's and projects? Or just certain (large) ones? Joe Z. Edit: clarification

It's so true...

Anyone have a chance to play with this, yet? I admit, I have zoom envy... Joe Z.

On further reflection, you could skip scripting by just using a variant dictionary, map, associative array, or other generic storage. Joe Z.

Possible, yes. Easy... hrm. The "right" way probably involves writing something using .NET reflection to look at the assembly. From there, you could build the structure as a cluster using LV's scripting interface. The, ah, cheap and dirty way probably involves using Redgate's Reflector in command line mode, outputting to a file, and parsing the file for the structure info. You're still going to need to use scripting, though. Overall, it would be very time consuming over just manually doing the work. Joe Z.

Really cool, thanks! Joe Z.

How about pdftotext, from the xpdf tools? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdftotext I haven't done this, but a command line invocation doesn't seem unreasonable... though I suspect it depends on the complexity of the pdf document you're looking at. Joe Z.

Side note: One of the recent ISO standards transforms it to SOUP: Software Of Unknown Provenance. Joe Z.

Four way? Note to any generic HR folks out there: that is how to write a "help wanted" ad for a techie: no salary mentioned, no "8 years of Java, 3 years of C++, must be a team player...". Sorry for gushing, I'm seriously impressed. Joe Z.

What do the users want? Usually, performance can be tweaked to work. User-tweaking, much harder. Joe Z.

Not that I've seen. You can build your own hash table system with arrays for storage. The actual hashing function is up to you, as are features like chaining and collision resolution. You can also implement dictionaries, either with parallel arrays, or using the Variant and Variant Attribute types (which have an underlying red-black tree for speed). Joe Z.

The Google custom search service: http://www.google.com/cse/ Joe Z.

Unfair as it is, it's still going to cost Toyota jobs, market share, and $billions. My point is simply that perceptions matter. Good product with a bad rep would be Microsoft, Apple, or Linux (take your pick). Bad product with a good rep... things don't work in that direction for long. About quality vs. reproducibility: yep. My contention is that overuse of systems like Six Sigma leads to reproducible products that no one really wants. From Wikipedia's Six Sigma entry: "A BusinessWeek article says that James McNerney's introduction of Six Sigma at 3M may have had the effect of stifling creativity. It cites two Wharton School professors who say that Six Sigma leads to incremental innovation at the expense of blue-sky work." The next wave seems to be officially sanctioned, process driven "Innovation", complete with consultants and management retreats. Well, I suppose it's better than MS' old motto: "Our new software is *much* buggier than the old stuff!" Joe Z.

Fascinating that you chose cars as an analogy. Did you know Toyota's expected loss is around $7.7US billion dollars? Just this quarter? It's their first loss in 70 years. Think how much they could have saved, had they fixed their "bug" in timely fashion. Do you sell products, or do you sell reputation? Reputation is worth a lot more. Joe Z.

It looks like the SAPI versions changed between Windows versions. WinXP uses SAPI 5.1, Win7 uses SAPI 5.4. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Speech_API#SAPI_5_API_family) There seems to be a lot of confusion on the matter: One posting MS tech note <- not for the faint of C (like myself) The file needed looks to be "sapi.dll". On my Win7 Pro machine (no LabVIEW), this dll appears in a couple of locations (it's 5.3, though, hrm). Possibly the reference to the dll in the code will need to be updated for the 64-bit version? 2 cents. Joe Z.

Jeff: For the record, I strongly recommend the SSP for anyone who can manage it. I still don't agree with charging for bug fixes, particularly now that it's technically feasible to separate them from new content. Chris: Bespoke software and off-the-shelf software are pretty different models... (NI isn't letting you spec out LV, is it? If so, where do I apply!?) I'm content to remain discontent on the subject... NI will do what they do. P.S. For some more opinions on the matter, check out: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/426319/should-you-charge-a-customer-for-bug-fixes Joe Z.

The above "release the following year" is how you end up without the SSP for the bug fixes. I think this gets away from the point, though. If I release code to a customer, the bug fixes are priced in. If they come back to me in two years and say "Hey, we found a bug that matters to us", I'm going to fix it for them, gratis (and have done so). I consider it to be what professionals do. In the past, NI has released features and bug fixes commingled. Not so much, this time around, but the SSP rules haven't changed. Personally, I would prefer to buy a single version of LV and get all bug fixes for that version free forever, rather than getting the cheap upgrade the next year. Joe Z.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ff384126.aspx <- Small Basic, a beginner's language I thought it was interesting, particularly the web and Silverlight integration, and ability to convert it to Visual Basic. Joe Z.

Funny thing is, if they ship me a bad hardware card, or PXI chassis, they replace it for free. This has left me with a bad taste for years. Joe Z.

jzoller = NI forums Underflow http://forums.ni.com/ni/profile?user.id=16166 Haven't posted there much in a while.

I can't disagree... But let me propose some alternative thinking. First, dependency on external code libraries can be difficult, especially for validation and package maintenance. A fully "native" solution avoids this. (Yes, I know that there is no actual difference, but clients are not always reasonable.) Second, in my heretical opinion, the generated code should not be maintained. At least, not at the wiring level. If changes are necessary, the code should be regenerated, not tweaked by hand. In other words, generated code should almost never be read, and so readability of generated code is no longer as important. Now, please note, this isn't to excuse sloppy wiring. Hopefully, the wire cleanup algorithm will improve with time so that the generated files are cleaner, and reduce to the final solution in one step. Thanks, Joe Z.