Where's the List of Everything?

[crelf]

QUOTE (BrokenArrow @ Dec 15 2008, 09:56 AM)

Does NI keep a List of everything that ships with LabVIEW, and where to find it?

This won't exactly solve your issue, but you could use the http://vista.viengineering.com/detail.aspx?ID=17' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">LabVIEW Documentation Generator and point it at your LabVIEW folder. It won't give you documentation of everything that ships with LabVIEW, but it'll give you everything that's currently installed.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

QUOTE (BrokenArrow @ Dec 15 2008, 10:56 AM)

Does NI keep a List of everything that ships with LabVIEW, and where to find it?. By "everything", I mean every VI, Function, and every possible Property and Invoke Node. I know, it would be voluminous, but the data exists somewhere.

Didn't they used to ship reference books with version 6? What happened to that idea?

They still do that but not in paper form. It's all in the online help.

I doubt there exist one single file or document, listing all of what you want. It's all buried in numerous knowledge databases, documents, internal release guidelines, build files, etc. etc. It could be compiled probably but I would hazard this to be a very time consuming job with little benefit as every driver release or even bug fix will change that again.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[BrokenArrow]

QUOTE (rolfk @ Dec 19 2008, 04:44 AM)

It could be compiled probably but I would hazard this to be a very time consuming job with little benefit as every driver release or even bug fix will change that again.

I agree completely. As long as the data exists, and can be found, then I'm happy. It just seems to me that some of the knowledge base is a bit "tribal".

[NI Guy]

QUOTE (BrokenArrow @ Dec 19 2008, 08:13 AM)

I agree completely. As long as the data exists, and can be found, then I'm happy. It just seems to me that some of the knowledge base is a bit "tribal".

Our Web team has recently added a lot of the function help directly onto the NI Web site on the product ordering pages under a tab called "Functions". You can check it out here http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/2454

We are slowly making progress on documenting bugs - reported, in process, and fixed - but that is pretty nasty to get our arms around. You can see some of the progress we made here from our last launch documentation: http://www.ni.com/support/lv8_6.htm Incidentally, this is one of the more highly clicked on links on our LabVIEW 8.6 launch page.

I'd be curious to hear any feedback on these documents. Did you know about them already? Are they answering any of the questions you have in mind? Is there a better way to organize these kind of docs?

In the meantime, we are going to have to rely on the tribe to supplement these efforts.

[jzoller]

QUOTE (NI Guy @ Dec 19 2008, 09:01 AM)

...

In the meantime, we are going to have to rely on the tribe to supplement these efforts.

Thank you, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">Seth Godin.

[BrokenArrow]

QUOTE (NI Guy @ Dec 19 2008, 11:01 AM)

...... http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/2454

I'd be curious to hear any feedback on these documents. Did you know about them already? Are they answering any of the questions you have in mind? Is there a better way to organize these kind of docs?

That is a very decent database, thanks for the update. No, I didn't know it existed - I don't typically look at those pages because I assumed they are targeted at promoting LabVIEW to novices.

So, while that is close, is there an alphabetical Index of every VI and function? A good example of a need for this: say you are browsing the palette and find MEAN.vi -- you might assume you've found all VI's having to do with taking the Mean, but there's also the Point by Point version - in a completely different major palette. I dare to say if you didn't use Search for "Mean", you may never have known of Mean PtByPt's existence. However, if you were looking at an alphabetical list, the two choices would be side by side, regardless of where NI has decided they should go on the palette.

[Yair]

QUOTE (BrokenArrow @ Dec 20 2008, 05:20 AM)

I dare to say if you didn't use Search for "Mean", you may never have known of Mean PtByPt's existence. However, if you were looking at an alphabetical list, the two choices would be side by side, regardless of where NI has decided they should go on the palette.

But that's exactly the point of an indexable and searchable database. Why is opening a book or a virtual document any easier than searching using the search function (or Quick Drop, both available using a couple of clicks)? In both cases you would have to KNOW to do what you want.

[BrokenArrow]

QUOTE (Yair @ Dec 20 2008, 11:49 AM)

But that's exactly the point of an indexable and searchable database. Why is opening a book or a virtual document any easier than searching using the search function (or Quick Drop, both available using a couple of clicks)? In both cases you would have to KNOW to do what you want.

Very true. But the point was, an alphabetical list will show you things regardless of the location in the palette. Take my example - when the user happens upon "Mean.vi" while looking around for a function to take an average, and no other VI's in the adjacent palettes start with "Mean", he/she is likely to give up, and may not think to use Search to find something else that starts with Mean.

Who would think, intuatively, that:

Mean.vi is is Mathematics > Probability and Statistics

MeanPtByPt.vi is in Signal Processing > Point by Point > Probability and Statistics Pt By Pt

An alphabetical list view would have revealed the other VI to the user.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

QUOTE (BrokenArrow @ Dec 21 2008, 09:29 AM)

Very true. But the point was, an alphabetical list will show you things regardless of the location in the palette. Take my example - when the user happens upon "Mean.vi" while looking around for a function to take an average, and no other VI's in the adjacent palettes start with "Mean", he/she is likely to give up, and may not think to use Search to find something else that starts with Mean.

Who would think, intuatively, that:

Mean.vi is is Mathematics > Probability and Statistics

MeanPtByPt.vi is in Signal Processing > Point by Point > Probability and Statistics Pt By Pt

An alphabetical list view would have revealed the other VI to the user.

Alphabetical order is for many things completely useless. There may be many more "means" with something in front too and then it doesn't help. But once you know the term mean and use the online search (palette search, quick drop or anything like that) you will get them all. It's been years that I really did use an alphabetical list to search for something rather than online resources (google, online help, etc, etc). I find alphabetical lists mostly useless, almost like learning out of your head complete mathematical or chemical formulas.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[Yair]

Yeah, what Rolf said.

My point is that you do already have an alphabetical list of all VIs and primitives (even three, if you count the palette search and QD as different ones). It's just that those lists are not flat, but searchable. All your user needs to know is to go there instead of to your list (which is presumably in a file somewhere that they have to dig up or in a very thick book on the top shelf).

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Have you ever looked at the LabVIEW online help (or webbased).

It contains a list of all VIs, properties, methods and events.

Ton