Dear all! Documenting our flows ist very important. Self documentation (like proper names, groups, etc.) is means, but not always sufficient. Additional information ('Description') added to flows helps here and there.
But we often need or would greatly benefit from seeing some information directly when looking at a flow. Comment node comes to the rescue. Unfortunately, it does not fully serve my needs.
I can give a name to a Comment node and add extra information as markdown. Great.
But getting that information requires serious moving, clicking to reaveal it and, again, to hide it. This interrupts my flow.
It was pointed out that one can add \n to the name to have more lines displayed. I call this abuse: I have to enter this in a small field to get what I want. I see this in flows here. This creatitivity tell us: There's a need.
It would be great if the authorities would consider to beef up the documentation features of NR. I see basically two possibilities building on the Comment node within the current structure:
Comment node is shown as now, information pops up when you hoover over it
Comment node information is shown instead of the name (this should be optional as a per node feature, default is 'off' to have downward compatibility)
Comment nodes can be tied to, connected to, attached to other nodes if they are within the same group, so no real hard pressure here (although the idea of attaching "notes" to entities on the panel has something, hasn't it?)
Good call, perhaps this is something that could be considered for v5?
In fact, taking this idea further, perhaps it should be a standard feature for all nodes? An option to expose a node's comment in the flow instead of the name?
I'm using NR v4.0.3 This version offers like a tooltip at the top left of a comment box to indicate there are comments inside. If you hover over it for a couple of seconds it will reveal what's inside.
I use NR 4.1.2 and I cannot reproduce this.
Yes, my comment node too gets a little symbol to let me know there is something.
But: Hovering does nothing (latest Firefox on macOS. pop ups allowed). I cannot reproduce the behavior you describe.
And: Even if it showed content after some time, some delay … This would be insuffucient.
I would like to see relevant information at a glance. I would like to have it right there under my eyes. No two step pop up, open close, but there.
And sometimes more info is required than a creativly formatted, trickily entered "name" of a node.
You can also make use of groups to wrap a bunch of nodes - and then add text to the title of that - admittedly it suffers in the same way as the title of comment nodes (IE has to be entered onto one line) - but may look better for your purposes - and of course being a group all the nodes contained move with the text...
I'm sure it's just a pull request away just need someone to code it.
(more seriously it would probably be quite tricky as sizing the group to fit and to fit text around nodes would have loads of weird edge cases to handle - also overloading of html tags within markdown is bound to also cause oddness. Not impossible but...)
I think a better idea would be some way to make it easier multiple lines in the name field of the comment node. Eg maybe a checkbox option to concatenate the body with the name
Oh oh, now you've got me thinking - always a dangerous thing!
Wouldn't it be fantastic for groups to have an option for a header and another for a footer with at least one of them allowing Markdown rendered to HTML?
Well, that would probably satisfy most needs. But where's the fun in that!
I've had a quick look in the node-red source, but I'm not familiar enough to find where nodes are visualised in the main code. Without that, I am not sure I can work out what would need to change to make a more flexible display.
just need someone to code it.
