RE: OpenG - Dynamic Palattes Top Level Add-ins...

[James K. <jk...@ja...>]

Mike,

Mike King wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone.  Jim and I started talking about the dynamic 
> palettes toolkit on OpenG and thought it would be better
> to discuss here.
> 
> What I would like to be able to do using the dynamic paletts 
> is add VIs at the top level of the palettes.  Not just a new
> submenu though because this can already be done by adding to
> (./vi.lib/Addons/) but what I would really like is to be able
> to add VIs by themselves and Merge VIs at the top level of
> the palettes.
>
> I use this a lot to add my most common VIs and some 
> precolored notes for documentation and other MERGE VIs.
> Currently I have to customize the palettes and manually add
> this (even with dynamic palettes) so I would like to know if
> there is a way to add content at the top level that is not  
> another sub menu?

If you place VIs or CTLs into ./vi.lib/Addons/ they will appear in the root
Functions or Controls palette (respectively).  However, the "Merge" VI
setting is stored in the MNU file and cannot be set dynamically in
palette-sync'ed folders.  If you want merged-VIs then you will need to
create your own MNU file.

> 
> I'd like to make it a toolkit so I can use OpenG to install 
> it on any machine I use instead of always having to manually
> add all my content to the dynamic palettes view.
> 

I don't recommend editing any of the dynamic palette view MNU files.  These
will be overwritten when you upgrade the dynamicpalette package.  I suggest
that you create a submenu of your tools and edit this submenu to merge your
VIs.  You can then package up this submenu and install it with the OpenG
Package Installer.  If you want your submenu installed in the root location
the you will need to have your MNU file stored beneath ./vi.lib/Addons/ .

Installed Locations of your Package:
./vi.lib/Addons/mikes_package1.mnu
./user.lib/_mikeslib.lib/mikes_package1/<PutAllYourVIsHere>

Choose a static (and permanent) location for your VIs beneath user.lib (put
an underscore at the beginning of the name of your subdirectory to prevent
this folder from showing up as a submenu in the User Libraries palette
menu).  We have chosen to store library VIs beneath user.lib, because
LabVIEW saves paths relative to user.lib/vi.lib if the file is stored
beneath user.lib/vi.lib.  This will allow us to move our MNU file to any
location and it will still be able to find its VIs.  Once you decide on a
static location, put your VIs in that location and create your MNU file.
After you are done creating your MNU file you can package up your VIs and
MNU file as an OpenG Package File and have it install the VIs to their
static location and the MNU file to any palette sync'ed folder (such as
./vi.lib/Addons/).

Let me know if you need any help setting up your package source files and
build script.

-Jim