Comments on Flowcode 4.1

[Eric]

Hi Team,

I have been working quite intensively with Flowcode V4.1 lately.
I would like to give you my comments on Flowcode behaviour that I encountered.
Lots of items have been improved compared to V 4.0, but there are are still several issues that need to be addressed.
These are my personal remarks in random order as I encountered them. Some of them are already mentionned by other users and these are meant as positive critic to make a promissing program better.

1) I think there is still a lot to do about the workspace. A lot of settings that I setup during work are not remembered between settings. Eg: the zoom level of the windows, the window position if I select " tile windows" , the position of the component bar, the size of the panel (it changes randomly). I am used to a standard workspace setup and it is very annoying that I always need to rearrange them between sessions. Please save and restore these setting when the file is saved.

2) I don't need the common tab of the component bar if I cannot configure it. This makes no sense. Please make it configurable or remove the common tab. Personally I preferred the situation like it was in V3.

3) Please get rid of the "simulation completed" window or at least remember it's location the next time when I have put it aside.
It even remains there for seconds when I switch programs. It is always in the way and I don't need that information. Or give it a on/off selection field in the global section for users who like it .

4) The same is valid for the splash-screen. It comes twice in V4.1. Give it a on/off selector in the global section.

5) Something very annoying is that variables are not sorted alphabeticaly in the variable window and are not remembered in a makro. I know you can sort them manualy but I guess there is no single user who will prefer an unsorted mess above a sorted list. Please let Flowcode do this for us. It is much more userfriendly.

6) The same is valid for the Project options. Selecting a PIC18F452 from the unsorted list of PIC's will keep you busy for a while.

7) Tab colors are not working.

8 ) Makro tabs are closing all the time when I select them. It looks like the little 'X' to close them is always there, although it is not visible.

9) Something about printing. Flowcode has been positioned as THE tool for commenting and learning C code.
I always wondered why all comment fields are so truncated that they become in fact useless. Inside makro's you don't see anything. The annotation fields improved a little, but are still insufficient. Even printing the flowchart doesn't solves it. You need to write a lot of comments manually on the printout to make the flow understandable for someone else. I don't think this is the intention? Please expand the comment fields to cover the whole page.

10) This is a suggestion: Why not allowing a "REM" situation. During testing, it often happens that I want to rem-out some icons. Now I need to insert jump-to icons to jump over these instructions. Right-clicking on the icon and to assign them out temporarily ( giving them a blue color) would solve this much more elegantly.

Thanks for reading,

Best regards,

Eric

10)

[saschech@gmx.de]

Hello

I be relieved,other userΒ΄s have the same problems,(i have any more with V4,1...).
So i work in the moment with V3 and test it with V4.......... because i dont no,V4 works correcly or it is my mistake.....
Also i think,if a problem is solved,matrixΒ΄ give out a patch to the users immediately!!!!
Anyway I like flowcode!!!..........

Regards Wolfgang

[medelec35]

If we pay for a product we should be able to get full use out of it. If there are reported bugs, then I believe they should be addressed and fix posted asap. Then the latest update will contain all the posted bug fixes. I understand it takes time for updates to be developed, but with V3 fixes were posted as and when required on a regular basis.
So please keep fixes coming along. We understand new product development is never perfect 1st time and we don't care how many fixes are issued until next update. Both good products and support is why people keep buying products from matrix. If one becomes weaker, then there could be potential sales issues.
With all that said, V4.1 is still very good! Much superior than V3. Keep up the great work!
Regards Martin.

[Steve]

Hi Eric. This is fantastic feedback - very useful for us. I will post a few comments here:

1) I think there is still a lot to do about the workspace. A lot of settings that I setup during work are not remembered between settings. Eg: the zoom level of the windows, the window position if I select " tile windows" , the position of the component bar, the size of the panel (it changes randomly). I am used to a standard workspace setup and it is very annoying that I always need to rearrange them between sessions. Please save and restore these setting when the file is saved.

There were issues with FC3 with remembering the state of the windows - in some cases, the windows appeared off-screen and could not be retrieved. This is why we removed this feature. We did not realise that this was an important issue for people, so I will work on reinstating this feature.

2) I don't need the common tab of the component bar if I cannot configure it. This makes no sense. Please make it configurable or remove the common tab. Personally I preferred the situation like it was in V3.

I think we will eventually produce a tool to fully customise this toolbar. Please bear with it for now.

3) Please get rid of the "simulation completed" window or at least remember it's location the next time when I have put it aside.
It even remains there for seconds when I switch programs. It is always in the way and I don't need that information. Or give it a on/off selection field in the global section for users who like it .

I know it's not perfect, but I believe it is an improvement on V3 where you always had to press "OK" to remove this window.

4) The same is valid for the splash-screen. It comes twice in V4.1. Give it a on/off selector in the global section.

This extra splash-screen was added because the speed of starting was too great and Flowcode would seem to hang on some PCs when loading. We have improved this start-up speed and so this second screen will be removed int he next version.

5) Something very annoying is that variables are not sorted alphabeticaly in the variable window and are not remembered in a makro. I know you can sort them manualy but I guess there is no single user who will prefer an unsorted mess above a sorted list. Please let Flowcode do this for us. It is much more userfriendly.

This has been on the list for a long time - I'll try to make sure this is bumped-up in priority.

6) The same is valid for the Project options. Selecting a PIC18F452 from the unsorted list of PIC's will keep you busy for a while.

This list is actually sorted, but it is sorted in alphabetic order (PIC18F452 comes between PIC18F4515 and PIC18F4520).

7) Tab colors are not working.

I've just noticed this - it should be an easy fix.

8 ) Makro tabs are closing all the time when I select them. It looks like the little 'X' to close them is always there, although it is not visible.

I agree that this is annoying. Unfortunately, this seems to be the standard behavious of the tab control from Microsoft. We'll look into ways of overriding this default behaviour.

9) Something about printing. Flowcode has been positioned as THE tool for commenting and learning C code.
I always wondered why all comment fields are so truncated that they become in fact useless. Inside makro's you don't see anything. The annotation fields improved a little, but are still insufficient. Even printing the flowchart doesn't solves it. You need to write a lot of comments manually on the printout to make the flow understandable for someone else. I don't think this is the intention? Please expand the comment fields to cover the whole page.

The "annotations" should solve this for you. Why are they insufficient?

10) This is a suggestion: Why not allowing a "REM" situation. During testing, it often happens that I want to rem-out some icons. Now I need to insert jump-to icons to jump over these instructions. Right-clicking on the icon and to assign them out temporarily ( giving them a blue color) would solve this much more elegantly.

Good idea.

[Eric]

Hi Steve,

About 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8: nice to hear.

About 3: V3 was indeed worse, but V4 isn't good neighter. If Flowcode could at least remember the location where I have put the simulation window aside, is ok for me.

About 6: I give you an example: this doesn't look sorted to me.

snap0146.jpg (39.18 KiB) Viewed 9226 times

About 9: I mostly program with a small main and several makro's. Variables in a makro are written as: name of makro + name of variable and this is often longer than what the annotationfield allowes.

If I show you this, can you find out what the program is about? I always comment the steps in very short phrases, but to inform somebody else, I should be able to comment more.

snap0148.jpg

(63.3 KiB) Downloaded 2603 times

Of course you could zoom in to 100% to see more, this sometimes helps, but then you must always zoom back to 75% to keep the overview.

Regards,

Eric

[Steve]

Re 6: That's so wierd - the list is sorted on all PCs I have seen.

Re 9: There are undocumented registry entries that control the maximum width/height of the annotation field. These are in the following location of the registry:

Code: Select all

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MatrixMM\FlowcodeV4\Options

They are both "DWORD" values and are "MaxAnnotationX" and "MaxAnnotationY". They default to 475 and 300 respectively. Setting either to zero will remove this maximum size restriction (and allow the full annotation to always be shown).

[Eric]

Splendid !

snap0155.jpg (36.16 KiB) Viewed 9206 times

Thx,

Eric

[medelec35]

Re 9: There are undocumented registry entries that control the maximum width/height of the annotation field. These are in the following location of the registry:

Code: Select all

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MatrixMM\FlowcodeV4\Options

They are both "DWORD" values and are "MaxAnnotationX" and "MaxAnnotationY". They default to 475 and 300 respectively. Setting either to zero will remove this maximum size restriction (and allow the full annotation to always be shown).

Steve thank you for sharing that information. It's details like that are really useful to know.
However ( there is usually 1 however :p) On my PC those two options are not available . Would you know why?

annotation.jpg (130.76 KiB) Viewed 9175 times

[saschech@gmx.de]

Hello

The same at my pc.

[Eric]

You need to add them yourself:

snap0158.jpg (68.46 KiB) Viewed 9153 times

Rgds,

Eric

[medelec35]

ah. Thanks Eric. I thought they were suppose to be added when installed V4.1.
My bad.

[fresh]

Re 9: There are undocumented registry entries that control the maximum width/height of the annotation field. These are in the following location of the registry:

Code: Select all

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MatrixMM\FlowcodeV4\Options

They are both "DWORD" values and are "MaxAnnotationX" and "MaxAnnotationY". They default to 475 and 300 respectively. Setting either to zero will remove this maximum size restriction (and allow the full annotation to always be shown).

Oh that's nice. Thank you for this information.