Children Windows

[Norm Kirchner]

Ok, so I know we can all find clever ways using sub-panels to mimic children windows being contained within a FP,

BUT

isn't it time that NI gave us the native ability to do this within LV?

and in the spirit of the season

Dear Santa,

I have been a good boy all year. I have wired all of my error clusters and have not revealed any of NIs NDA information.

My Chrismas wish this year is not for myself but for all the little boys and girls at NI especially Dr.T . Please give them a clue so that they may stop rolling out new major versions of LV every 6-12 months and fix the ever exponentailly increasing number of bugs present in their software so it stops crashing on me.

but if that's too hard, children windows will have to do

Sincerly

Norm Jr.

PS Lovin your beard, all I can pull of is a moustache and a flavor saver ~,~

[Dan Bookwalter]

I have been asking for real Child Windows for years ….. there are VI’s to do it , but , it would be nice to have the native ability….

Greg M. at NI told me years ago why they didn’t want to go down that road but I forget what the reasoning was…

also i think Stephen pointed out that they tried to use child windows within the project during the last Beta and it was quickly shot down , i liked the idea... but sadly it went away....

Dan

[crelf]

QUOTE(Norm Kirchner @ Dec 8 2007, 07:26 AM)

Ok, so I know we can all find clever ways using sub-panels to mimic children windows being contained within a FP, BUT isn't it time that NI gave us the native ability to do this within LV?

Merry Christmas! Ho Ho Ho!

It's not native, but hopefully it'll do what you're after. I wrote it a *looong* time ago - all care, no responsibility:

http://lavag.org/old_files/monthly_12_2007/post-181-1197066047.jpg' target="_blank">

[Justin Goeres]

QUOTE(crelf @ Dec 7 2007, 03:21 PM)

It's not native, but hopefully it'll do what you're after. I wrote it a *looong* time ago - all care, no responsibility:

Wow, that's wild. FYI, it's buggy as hell on WindowsXP, at least for the example you showed above (Calculator embedded in Notepad). Lots of weird redraw problems. Still a cool trick, and I know you didn't exactly promise the moon and the stars .

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

QUOTE(Justin Goeres @ Dec 8 2007, 01:49 AM)

Wow, that's wild. FYI, it's buggy as hell on WindowsXP, at least for the example you showed above (Calculator embedded in Notepad). Lots of weird redraw problems. Still a cool trick, and I know you didn't exactly promise the moon and the stars .

Doesn't surprise me! They are two different processes that suddenly are tight together through Windows message queues. That's bound to create problems in newer Windows versions and most likely things will get even worse on Vista.

I did that in the past with IMAQ Windows being embedded in a LabVIEW front panel. Works flawlessly at least up to Windows XP but here the IMAQ Windows are really LabVIEW Windows too, so no external process being suddenly forced into embedding in LabVIEW.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[crelf]

QUOTE(rolfk @ Dec 9 2007, 12:03 AM)

I did that in the past with IMAQ Windows being embedded in a LabVIEW front panel. Works flawlessly at least up to Windows XP...

Yep - in fact, I originally wrote the VI to do exactly that (have a look at the VI description )

QUOTE(Justin Goeres @ Dec 8 2007, 04:49 PM)

Wow, that's wild. FYI, it's buggy as hell on WindowsXP, at least for the example you showed above (

Calculator

embedded in

Notepad

). Lots of weird redraw problems.

Yeah - I expect that the UI calls that I used back on Windows 95 have been replaced by more appropriate ones since then.

[Norm Kirchner]

I didn't download the demo, but I did the same thing and experienced the same issues w/ win32 API long ago. Was kind of cool seeing the LV windows contained and such..... until it crashed.

As far as it being integrated into LV in a previous beta, I never saw FP inside a FP, but there was the Integrated Development environment that came out w/ 8.0 beta that allowed you to develop w/in a master parent window, but when it came to you making 1 FP a child of another, I don't think it was there.

I'm all hopeful now that we'll get a work from AQ or someone @ NI behind the reasons, perceived or real why they are not implementing it.

I suppose it goes back to them not caring if LV is a real general purpose programming language, they just want the Scientists and Engineers to be able to throw SHIT UI's together use their hardware. "see Justin G's post about mythbusters for example"

Really the more I think about NI's lack of care about touting LV as a general programming language that can go for the future, the more I realize that it matters little to them that we be able to use LV to create good programs. As long as the engineers and scientists can get their data from the hardware, who cares about the usability of the program.

</Rant>

[Ton Plomp]

QUOTE(Norm Kirchner @ Dec 10 2007, 07:22 AM)

As long as the engineers and scientists can get their data from the hardware, who cares about the usability of the program.

Signal Express?

At last hey gave us with LV 8 panes! a small step in the right direction.

Ton

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

QUOTE(Norm Kirchner @ Dec 10 2007, 01:22 AM)

I suppose it goes back to them not caring if LV is a real general purpose programming language, they just want the Scientists and Engineers to be able to throw SHIT UI's together use their hardware. "see Justin G's post about mythbusters for example"

Really the more I think about NI's lack of care about touting LV as a general programming language that can go for the future, the more I realize that it matters little to them that we be able to use LV to create good programs. As long as the engineers and scientists can get their data from the hardware, who cares about the usability of the program.

Cool down! IMHO, MDI (Multiple Document Interface) is overrated and simply a pain in the ###### to work with. Saying that since you can't easily do it in LabVIEW, LabVIEW can not be seen as a general programming language is definitely more than stretching it. I do believe there is a reason why the Mac did not support SDI either and at least for me it is also because it is simply a useless UI concept.

The reason that they do not want to have LabVIEW as a general programming language is because it would take the control out of their hands. It would need to be submittet to a standardization gremium and from that point on onwards NI would have much less to say of what the next direction in development would be. Also submitting it to a standardization gremium would mean lessening or even giving up the exclusive patent protection over some of the features as otherwise there wouldn't be any standardization gremium taking the submission serious at all.

All in all lots of work, even more lobbying, as getting something accepted as standard requires lots and lots of lobbying, and all that for the doubtful benefit of loosing control over a very nice and interesting programming environment. I don't see TI doing anything like that very much either and from a business point of view it wouldn't make sense anyhow.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[Norm Kirchner]

QUOTE(rolfk @ Dec 10 2007, 01:35 AM)

Saying that since you can't easily do it in LabVIEW, LabVIEW can not be seen as a general programming language is definitely more than stretching it.

All in all lots of work, even more lobbying, as getting something accepted as standard requires lots and lots of lobbying, and all that for the doubtful benefit of loosing control over a very nice and interesting programming environment. I don't see TI doing anything like that very much either and from a business point of view it wouldn't make sense anyhow.

<cooling>

The train of thought that led to this rant was less "they don't have this so it must mean they don't care" but rather "they don't care to and not having this just reminds me how much that makes me mad". This is because I would like NI to focus more of their efforts on enabling us as programmers rather than doing it as an afterthought.

/<cooling>