Feedback on AMX tools
HARMAN_rgelling
Posts: 96
I was talking with an AMX dealer today who was in for training and he mentioned a few things that irritated him about NL Studio and TPDesign4 and things that would be nice to make things easier and faster from start to finish. Always good to get feedback like that. You never know what some ideas can generate down the line. That got me thinking about what features other people wish were in the tools or what features would make it easier/faster to get things done. What things are irritating? What things are good? What do other tools do that you really like?
0
Comments
With TPDesign the most useful request that comes to mind is to have a way to assign a class or a style to a button. Sort of an extension of colour pallettes so that colours, borders, background and chameleon images etc can be defined. When you are tweaking it is then just a matter of making the modifications in a single point and it will then update the other buttons utilizing that style.
Another feature which would be awsome would be an chameleon and background images scaling implimentation similar to Adobe's 9-slice scaling. It would work nicely with the style based defination so an asthetic could be defined which would then be flexible enough to apply to objects of different size.
Once again rgelling, thanks for actually speaking to the people utilizing your products, it's a rare thing.
Thanks for chiming in and asking for our opinions! Something I'm dying to have (and maybe it's possible with Eclipse, though I doubt that will happen any time soon) is to have a "code beautifier" / "code formatter." If I open up someone else's code who may have come from a Java background, you may see something like this:
BUTTON_EVENT[dvTP,nBUTTONS]{ PUSH:{ // DO SOMETHING } }Or perhaps an "inexperienced" programmer (or one just stuck in their ways) like this:
BUTTON_EVENT[dvTP,nBUTTONS] { PUSH: { // DO SOMETHING } }I want to be able to load up anyone's code, and have it format things the way I want to see it (in our example, like this)
BUTTON_EVENT[dvTP,nBUTTONS] { PUSH: { // DO SOMETHING } }Code formatting is very important when debugging, or viewing someone else's work. Instead of trying to decipher the code because things aren't lined up how you'd do them, we could just jump right into debugging. This is why most probably put the tab stop settings in their code somewhere, so if someone does look at it - it's not completely messed up and representing how the coder designed it.
Also, it'd be super nice to have a drop-down of all the defined devices in the "Control a device" and "Emulate a device" dialogs; the drop list could have a "Custom..." selection where you could fill in the blanks yourself. But I HATE having to look up the device I want to test out - I know the name almost all the time, just not the device number. This would mean having to fix the current problem of when adding a device it doesn't show up in the list.
Those are probably the first two things that come to mind.
I would also like the ability to put popups and pages into folders for organization. This would be separate from their group (ie does not make them mutually exclusive when displayed on panel). Maybe have a choice to view by group or by folder?
I would like to be able to give popups and/or buttons a layer value. This would be an integer value used to decide what is on top (highest value = button that is pushed). This would be very helpful as right now the above popups works for status, but is useless if I need to display a warning popup (or doorbell).
I would also like to add my support for the plug-in support for Eclipse.
Jeff
On the topic of organization, I would love to see folders used in the resource manager. I want all of my logos in one folder, all of my buttons in another, all of my icons in their own folder and all of the backgrounds in their own folder. (Of course - let us make & name the folders.) The basic structure of references in the panel (including popup page directives) is through XML. The imagines don't necessarily NEED to be in their own folder when transfered onto the panel, but just in TPD4.
Currently, I need to rename everything with a prefix, that way they are grouped when I go through my resource manager, such as tv_<name>.png for my TV logos, xm_<name>, btn_<name>, bg_<name>, so on and so forth. This can be a pain when you get a group of icons that don't follow that convention (but the use of a program called ReNamer has helped a lot.)
Anyway - again my 2 cents.
In TPD:
1. Ability to cut/copy/paste multiple pages at once
2. Ability to scale graphics and buttons
Also would like to have a "purge" feature that could alert you to any unused icons, bitmaps, fonts, and pages and give the option to purge them from the TP file.
Like PhreaK said, thanks rgelling for taking time out to hear our thoughts on the software.
--John
Nice idea John!
For TP Design
- Alpha for border
- Custom shaped buttons/areas (especially for floor plans)
- Generate panel preview as exe
- Group/Ungroup buttons (and align/space groups)
- Global poups or page group popups with layer Z-order (a volume bar for a room, source independent, always on top on any page from that room)
For NS
- Right click on call/function name -> go to call/function definition
- F1 -> keyword sensitive on cursor (not only when fully selected)
- duplicate device defined warning
- Ctrl-H (replace) would be nice to stay on the last used scope (selection vs whole file). Arghh... Happened not once...
- Custom section (expandable/collapsible) for better structuring the code
I think this is already possible. I'm not exactly sure how, but it had something to do with only pushing the active part of the button/image (not the transparant part)
Look at the AMX Demo that comes loaded with the older touchpanels...
I presume you are talking about active touch vs bounding box... I agree that would be a way of doing it, but I was asked if something could make my life easier :-)
We all know Netlinx Studio is for code and TPD is for panels, but this may be possibe.
Double click in a button on TPD, jumps to your source code and put the cursor on the respective button/level event (or even create).
Just like some IDE's in the market such as VB, Delphi...
See posts 4 to see how I did it, and 14 to see the result. Perhaps just give us more than 1 Custom Border reference, how about 5 or 10? And then the ability to "import" left, right, up, down and each corner for the custom border. Could be another tab in the resource manager.
http://www.amxforums.com/showthread.php?t=598
The commmand not delete a word, executes a delete.
+1 - very annoying!
-open multiple files at once (shift highlight)
-Allow docking menus to the left side of the main window area (used to be able to do this)
- +1 on teh scalable graphics in the buttons I'm sick of bouncing graphics back out to photoshop cause I want to shrink my buttons down 10 pixels
And My all time personal most annoying feature, having to close the touchpanel file in TP Design, to transfer it with Studio!
Man, wouldn't that be nice. This could come in so handy.
agree to this statement, I have always encounter it, especially programming on site where you have a limited time only.
If TPD4 is open why don't you just transfer the panel file from within there, connecting through a virtual master?
Programmatically, how about a command or feature to allow a Netlinx program to move a button on the fly. I realize that it may not be possible to create a button from within a program, but how about the ability to set the coordinates of a button on the fly. This would allow the TP designer to create a generic interface and allow the program to set the button coordinates, in the same way that the program can set other properties.
The other ideas are all good as well.
Sheldon Samuels
Granted:
no f*cking way!
the %R embedded code isn't found in AMX-PI. Is this a secret?
edit:
can i also check the current coordinates of a button/popup?
Chad, thanks for posting this. I knew it was possible, but as yuri pointed out, I couldn't find it in AMX-PI. I'll second his question - is this documented somewhere?
It was in the now defunct Software History. I don?t know why it never made its way to AMX-PI.
Nope, that?s not one of the properties currently supported by Custom_Event.
That always seems to take longer than using Studio.
Does this work or is it a joke? To position a button, why would you need four coordinates? Can you move and resize with the same command?
Paul
Strange. I have asked TS many times about this and was told no command existed. Perhaps they only tell their best dealers
Paul
See post a few above here, but apparently there is no way.
That's what they said about moving buttons too.
Paul
Jeff