CubeIDE, TouchGFX, and Support Website Questions, ST DEVELOPERS PLEASE READ;

[HGran.1]

Dear ST management in charge of Embedded Tools and Website Management,

This year, I have embraced your hardware and tools for our new product development.

To say that has been a challenge, is a major understatement.

Not due to the microcontroller hardware design complexity, but almost solely due to the development tools ecosystem.

You HAVE made many innovations in this arena, for which you should be applauded, but seem to continue to miss many easy to accomplish, but very critcal improvements

that would dramatically improve your acceptance among professional developers and ultimately result in more revenue.

Here is a list of some things that I have noticed, that if addressed, would make me comfortable to spec and use your controllers and components in all my embedded design.

If other developers reading this agree, please acknowlege this to ST as well. 

1 Remember Login across all ST (Remember Me, should actually REMEMBER ME) 

2 FIX EXTREMELY SLOW WEBSITE FOR Technical Resources, typically 60 seconds or more for anything other than marketing info (SLOWER THAN ANY OTHER SIMILAR VENDOR)

3 Provide either pdf document indexing app to aid in document identification and access AND/OR better human readable (more descriptive) document naming

4 Add Persistance for screen size and position on TouchGFX (NOT JUST Maximized)

5 Add Persistance for screen size and position on Hardware Selection (Not just full size on Y axis)

(I know what works best for my screen(s), PLEASE let me be in control of that simple thing)

6 Fix TouchGFX project naming and location to better intetgrate with CubeIDE when using multiple projects with same controller type

7 Create single cohesive guide to FULL installation of Cube infrastructure ST software tools procedures INCLUDING TouchGFX

8 Create single cohesive guide to FULL updating of Cube infrastructure ST software tools procedures INCLUDING TouchGFX

9 Create guide for TouchGFX/CubeIDE integrated workflow focusing on 

A. Create project in CubeIDE

B. Add TouchGFX project (either from scratch OR template)

C. Edit MVC in CubeIDE

D. Debug in CubeIDE

E. Modify/Refine/Enhance UI in TouchGFX

F. Reiterate steps C-E many times

10. Stay committed to fixing known SEVERE existing ST tools bugs, instead of just putting them off and complaining of not enough time or prioritization.

11. Fix the samples and board support code to work with CubeIDE infrastructure without requiring users to debug missing code resources and incorrect paths

12. Provide an honest, realistic list of what samples/examples/templates actually work out of the box with CubeIDE and TouchGFX. Maybe also use this as an internal todo list to standardize the quality of same.

Nothing is more frustrating than to falsely set expections that something works, then to find out that it's not the case, but you already knew of it, but didn't provide transparency, wasting valuable developers time.

It is obvious that it's hard to intitially provide a wide variety of samples/example code, but if developers were aware of the existing state of such resources, they could choose their level of participation in the debugging process to achieve functionality. 

13. All the YouTube videos from ST that I've seen, seem to be marketing related, without any real technical merit, instead of really helpful technical information that

a development engineer would watch and witness the ease of implementation, driving them to consider using your components.

It's really a shame, and a telltale sign that all the actually usable technical information on YouTube, comes from hobbyists, and not ST's engineering group.

Once these items are addressed, ST will have a genuine Premier development tool infrastructure and will undoubtably gain widespread increased marketshare, 

as a result of actually delivering the tools that they have already promised, but not actually delivered yet to the required professional standards.

The existing ST vision of CubeIDE and related infrastructure is a bold one, but it's execution history seems to have left many professionals feeling let down 

due to its execution. 

Again, if any other professionals out there agree with this, PLEASE add to this voice so ST management may realize the importance of these items.

This is not a RANT, but honest, thoughtful criticism, offered only with the best of intentions, with the hope that it will be thoughtfully considered...

Thank you,

Heather

[HGran.1]

Good Morning Martin,

I have experienced some unexpected name mangling in TouchGFX Designer, when copying and pasting existing TextArea objects that have wildcard defined.

This was confirmed in ScreenViewBase.cpp;

Q1: When is/are the Buffer variable(s) for the wildcard(s) actually created when a copy occurs ?

The object naming workflow for the UI for TextArea properties, seems to allow the wildcard buffer name to get out of sync with the visible object name.

Q2: Is it possible to expose the wildcard buffer variable so the user can (re)name it ?

Q3: It seems against the existing UI workflow to expose an 'Apply' button, so I suspect that is undesirable, Is there a better workflow for copy/paste ?

Q4: Is it possible for the properties sidebar on the right side of the designer to have a movable splitter?

It's really difficult to have enter C++ Interaction code and not be able to see most of it. I end up having to edit it in an external editor.

Q5: Is it possible to add a 'Remove from MRU List' for previous TouchGFX projects ?

If not, can you provide me with a location where to manually delete entries?

Q6: I had asked about the 'assets\images\__designer' folder custom user image access on a upgraded 4.13 project. I ended up removing exsting object references to the unassignable images, deleting the images, then readding them and I then could properly assign them again as expected. The idea of renaming the folder didn't pan out as it does appear that the special folder name is required for the proper generated assets, That is Correct ?

Its been a struggle, but I finally seem to have found a usable workflow that allows reiterative:

1. Editing IOC in CubeMX
2. Editing UI in TouchGFX
3. Editing code in CubeIDE
4. Access to all relevent HAL driver code
5. Debugging in CubeIDE
6. Not requiring ANY include path manipulation OR manual file manipulation
7. Utilize all available memory on the device
8. Utilize RTOS
9. Minimize the on disk project footprint to eliminate all 2+ GB files
10. Work across different discovery boards

Due to the vast amount of dfferent workflow possibilities, although it was not paticularly difficult, this was not an intuitive task at all.

It was VERY time consuming to try and test various workflow possibilities to determine how to achieve these requirements.

NONE of the existing published internet workflows (by either ST or others) that I could find accomodated all these requirements.

All of the published workflows supported SOME of the requirements (to some degree) , but not allowing a reiterative workflow.

Please disregard my 2 GB questions as they have been solved.

I really would appreciate a reply to the other remaining questions, the general ST infrastructure questions seem to have gone unanswered, and those are some of the ones that as a recent new user to the ST ecosystem, provide a pretty strong impression of the developer experience.

If I didn't have to 'Login' EVERY TIME and the 'Remember Me' actually worked, as it seems to on your competitor's sites, it would really save a lot of time and enhance the experience. I have tested this from multiple machines and browsers and it is consistently not functional.

Finally, and I realize this is a pie in the sky kind of request/observation, but it would be awesome for TouchGFX designer to allow multiple example applications to be 'merged'

Thanks again for all your help.

Heather

[HGran.1]

Good Morning,

I have a LOT of bad entries (folder/projects deleted), for example) in the TouchGFX Designer's MRU list.

How can I remove/reset these ?

Where are those entries stored?

If there is not a way to maintain these from the Designer UI, Like right click on a recent project and select Remove, for instance, I would like to be able to edit those by hand...

Thanks,

Heather