JKI State Machine Follower - At Run-Time Show Executing Frame

[Jim C]

I had a separate QD plugin for this, but I can't find evidence that I ever shared it with the community.  You've just given "ctrl+space ctrl+q" back to me.  Thank you.   However, mine puts it exactly eight pixels from the output tunnel and pre-wires an empty String constant...

Another feature to add might be my JKI State Machine Follower.  It activates the current Case Structure case while the VI is running.  Maybe?  You'll save me "ctrl+space ctrl+f"...

Thanks for all your work on this,
Jim

[Jim Kring]

Thanks for the feedback @Jim C. I'm glad you like this new feature.

I also like the idea of allowing the JKI SM Editor to help with debugging and have it highlight the actively executing frame.  I've been toying with some similar thoughts :-)

[Jim Kring]

Hi @Jim C

I split this discussion into a separate discussion thread. I like you're idea about the JKI State Machine Follower. I've been collecting some ideas about possible run-time and debugging tools:
https://github.com/JKISoftware/JKI-State-Machine-Editor/wiki/Roadmap#run-time-tools

Here are a few ideas:

• State logging - Show which states executed in which order
• Data logging - Show what data was changed between execution of frames 
• Single stepping - Execute one frame at a time and pause between execution
• Breakpoints on individual states - Pause when a state is executed, so that highlight execution can then be enabled (and maybe we could turn execution highlighting ON, but I'm not sure how to do that programmatically)

These tools would probably require temporarily swapping the Parse State Queue function in the user's instance of a JKI State Machine with a special one that has debugging features under the hood (there could be a debugging and non-debugging version of Parse State Queue that we could script in/out of the VI to enable/disable the debugging features).

Anyhow, I wanted to let you know that this is a direction we're looking into, in case you have any ideas you've already been thinking about or working on :-)

Thanks,

[docH]

• single step sounds good - and should work in both direction Last/Next Step
• dynamic state generation - maybe JSON imported State"Objects" (export fct would be nice 2)

Edited March 22, 2019 by docH