Re: In-diagram documentation [Was: Motivation for having a 'text color' that is invisible]

["Michael Ross" <michael e ross gmail com>]

Yes, two different functions, three if you count linking out for big time detail.

I often wonder if this fancy junk isn't why things get slow.  It adds to code bloat.  Maybe it would be nice to be able to disable these things too.

As far as when you could add them to Dia...I was really just brainstorming.  

If I had my druthers I would like to see -  easy shape creation and documentation to guide the casual user as the first thing. 

 Shape creation was what I wanted from Dia at the very start and I never got to where I could do it easily and simply so I just live with what is available and somethings move grouped stuff from one Dia to another.  I live without custom connection points becasue I could never figure out how to customize them.  I can live with the other peculiarities, odd text size etc.  It is shape creation that I really want.  (I even looked at the svg spec to see if I could help with documentation, but that was way over my head and my time budget).

Thanks for a very useful program - for all my kvetching I am pretty happy.

mike

On 10/28/07, Lars Clausen < lars raeder dk> wrote:

On Sat, 2007-10-27 at 14:01 -0400, Michael Ross wrote:
> In the development  environment of LabVIEW, we place functional icons
> - subroutines.  They are connected by wires of data.  The whole
> business is self documenting, if you use it with that intent.  When
> you bring your cursor above an icon a couple things can happen, tip
> strips can arise with whatever text in it you like.  Also there is
> Context - Help that displays notes in a window, if it is activated
> (there are other functions as well and the Context Help can contain
> links to more in depth Help).  The Icons also have a label and a
> caption which are toggled visible by either manual or programmatic
> means.

So you're describing two kinds of documentation here: User-input "tip
strips" that appears like tooltips for widgets and which gives hints on
the role of an object instance in the particular diagram, and
programmed-in "context help" shown in a separate window that gives hints
on how to use an object.  Is that correct?  I can see the use of both,
but neither is something I'm seeing as likely to happen in this release.
The "tip strip" should probably not be added until we have the
properties better structured, so as to not increase the size of the
properties dialogs even more.  The fancy version of course would allow
editing the tip strip in place:)

-Lars

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Michael Ross
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