Unlink - a small QOL suggestion

[boingy]

I'm still new to VMD but I have a small suggestion relating to linking and unlinking GUI objects.

You can link a whole bunch of controls together by selecting them all and selecting "Link Selected Controls" from the right-click menu. An excellent feature. However, to unlink them you have to right click on each control in turn and select "Unlink", which can be a bit of a pain if you have more than a handful of linked controls. It would be excellent if there was an "Unlink All" option in that context menu. It's only a small thing though.

I'm also loving the ability to save and recall Control Sets. A real time saver for me.

[UrbanCyborg]

There is an Unlink All option, but it acts on the entire module, not just a set of linked controls.

[boingy]

Thanks for that. I had never thought to right-click on the module so you've just led me to a few other handy things too!

[ColinP]

Strangely I've never used Link, Unlink or Control Sets.

Am I missing some major benefit?

I've done everything using just CTRL and ALT. I also use lock and unlock a lot to mask operations.

For larger modules with duplicated controls I do a mock up of the duplicated section then copy and paste the relevant part from InitializeControls() into my code, parameterize it and create things programmatically. Which is far easier and more accurate than creating a large GUI interactively. I use EnumMap extensively in this situation.

[UrbanCyborg]

Personally, I've found it awkward to use, but necessary in some situations. For instance, in a few of my modules, I have controls stacked in pages to optimize footprint usage; having to select by hand every time would have had me in a rubber room in pretty short order. I can appreciate the advantages of instantiating on the fly as Colin does, but for me, losing the connection with the GUI editor would seriously impact my waterfall design process, which usually has me fiddling the interface a lot for any non-trivial module. And, of course, just about when I've decided a design is stable, I get a brainstorm and have to fit more controls, jacks, whatever into the "fixed" design, and, one might hope, in a visually pleasing manner.

Reid

[boingy]

Strangely I've never used Link, Unlink or Control Sets.

Am I missing some major benefit?

I think the Control Set thing is a relatively recent addition to the IDE but it allows you to store commonly used groups of objects so you can drag multiple copies into the project and also have them available for other projects. A simple example is a jack socket plus a text label. One drag and drop and you have a socket and a label, in your preferred style and colour scheme. It makes it really quick and easy to stick to a house style. And, yes, you can do it programmatically but you need to have roughed something out in advance for anything but the most trivial of modules.

Similarly Link just allows you to keep related stuff together, like a MIDI socket a label and an LED so you can drag them around as a single entity.

Just more tools in the toolbox, and most welcome they are too.

Edit: Not such a "relatively recent addition" as I thought. Looks like September 2020 ish: viewtopic.php?t=1120
(I've read a huge chunk of this forum in the last few days so stuff is a bit mixed up hehe.)

[ColinP]

I do most of my design work on good old fashioned paper to be honest. I then mock things up in VMD and write crude bits of code to test concepts then go back to paper. Repeat ad nauseam.

Committing things to software too early limits things in my experience. You've invested so much time in perfecting something that looks nice on screen that it becomes increasingly difficult to say nah throw that away and go back to the drawing board.

I'm also used to using small toolsets and learning to work around the inadequacies. You can group things using just CTRL and do mass edits on the selected components by mouse, keyboard shortcuts or by editing in the Properties Pane.

Being able to change things interactively is very nice but most minor changes to programmatically created elements can be handled in code almost as easily.

I can see being able to transport a look between modules would be handy but I either start with a template or use my style guide - yup written on paper to quickly replicate things like basic layout, fonts and colors.

I get through a 200 page A4 notebook at the rate of about one per 10 weeks so it's not too ridiculous. And one big advantage is I can quickly go back and read detailed notes on how some bit of code I wrote a year ago really works with diagrams, graphs, scribbled maths and such like. Things that don't male it into program comments even with the best of intentions.