Customizing Menus Using Display Hints

The descriptor for each parameter includes a widget hint to allow the device designer to specify the type of control to be used to display the parameter. The hints available depend on the parameter type, the constraint type, and the values in the constraint for each parameter. This allows the designer to customize the menu for each device.

DashBoard 1.0 ignored widget hints and provided a default control based on parameter and constraint type. For backwards compatibility, DashBoard 2.0 (and later) ignores widget hints for parameters with the version field set to 0 or 1, providing the same default behavior as DashBoard 1.0. To use widget hints, it is necessary to set the version field within the parameter to 2.


 

When a read-only parameter provides a widget hint, a read-only version of the parameter’s preferred widget is used. The exceptions are WIDGET_DEFAULT (displays like DashBoard 1.0) and Alarm Tables (display the alarm). Hints for status menu parameters are overridden for correct display in that space.