Enhance ITableColumn interface with comment property

Idea Place
1

I suggest to implement the following feature:

Enhance ITableColumn interface with comment property.

A typical use case might be:

In complex reports with many fields or variables, sometimes there are so many fields it is not easy to pick the right one. If ITableColumn would be extended with a comment property I can describe the purpose of the field. LL could display this information when showing the tooltip of the mouse hovering over the fields or variables.

Even better would be, if the comment supports some kind of markup or is capable of handling RTF-text, so I could use bold, italic attributes and paragraphs. LL already uses some kind of Tooltips in his Ribbons, so this should be possible.

Even cooler would be, if there is a placeholder of the current sample value which LL uses for the layout-preview, so I can even better describe the purpose of the field using an example.

I know I can already group fields and variables hierarchical. I also can search for fields. But having a tooltip with a description makes life far more pleasant.

2

You can use the VariableHelpText Event in order to change the default tooltip for a field/variable (plain text only). Admittedly, this is “detached” from the DataProvider interface but allows to do just about the same thing. We’re a bit hesitant to extend the existing interfaces, as there are tons of custom implementations out there that would break. Of course there could be a ITableColumnExt interface, however this concept reaches its limits when implementing the next change :slight_smile:.

3

Great! VariableHelpText Event works and is currently a feasible workaround. Nonetheless I would prefer the ITableColumnExt interface because I already use IDataProvider and could assign the comment directly to the property. And some kind of markup or RTF support allows to describe more complex fields.

By the way, when using VariableHelpText and I have more than three lines of description, only the first three lines are shown in the edit dialog, a scrollbar would be nice…