What's New in the v9.5 Canvas Help

The v9.5 Canvas Help includes many documentation updates to describe the new features and enhancements contained in the latest Canvas release.

Changes to the v9.5 Canvas Help

The following documentation items have been added, removed, or revised in the Canvas Help.

Canvas (general applications)

• Canvas, Canvas View, and Canvas View Lite now run as 64-bit applications by default. When started the application will detect the platform and will run as 64-bit on a 64-bit machine and 32-bit on a 32-bit machine.
• Canvas Settings — The following features are now documented:
  • Three user interface color themes are now supported for Canvas, Canvas.View, and Canvas.View.Lite. All are configured on the Canvas Backstage view.
  • The blink interval for unacknowledged alarms is now configurable on the Canvas Backstage view
• Historical Playback — Now documented, including how to script
• Layers pane — Several usability features have been added and documented
• Settings pane — Locked toggle button added to Home tab
• Terminology — Added a definition for single-value controls
• Themes — The Canvas applications (Canvas, Canvas View, and Canvas View Lite) now support three color themes for the user interface: Dark, Light, and Blue. Configuration is via settings on the Canvas Backstage view.
• As part of the support for alternate color themes, a new color configuration option has been added, Auto. Where applicable, color-related properties will default to this configuration, allowing them to automatically follow the theme of the current client rather than fixing them to the one used when the screen was created. By using Auto for the color configuration, a screen developer can work in their preferred theme without affecting the presentation of the final screen when displayed by the user—avoiding display problems such as white text over a very light background, etc.
  • The following controls are affected by this enhancement: Alarm Grid, Button, Chart (background color only), Combo Box , CygNet Grid, Detail, Donut, Heat Map (background color only), Linear Gauges, Object Container, Screen (background and layout grid colors only), Shape, Sparkline (background color only), Text Tool, Tile View (background and detail colors only), Tree Map (background color only), Value Indicator, and the Alarm Notifier.

Canvas Controls and Objects

• All Canvas Control Properties — Enhanced readability of the Script property column
• Multi-line tooltips — A tooltip can be single-line or multi-line. Tooltips are supported in the following controls: Button, Detail, Donut, Image, Linear Gauges, Shape, Text Tool, and Value Indicator
• Lock setting — A Lock property (isLocked) has been added to the Locations category for all controls

• Alarm Grid — The following features are now documented:
  • Custom context menu items
  • Grid row summaries
  • A new cell background, text, and border color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Button — The following features are now documented:
  • Custom context menu items
  • Some image sizing properties have been renamed to conform with other controls: Image file path, Image file source, Size, and Size mode. The functionality of these properties has not changed.
  • A new background, text, and border color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Chart — The following features are now documented:
  • A new Series and Y-Axis configuration dialog box is documented. Each series is automatically assigned to a y-axis. You can now add an unlimited number of y-axes to a chart and an unlimited of series to each y-axis.
  • Configurable Toolbar items, including customizable quick range buttons and other functional buttons (live update, date range configuration, save, open, print, export, and reset zoom)
  • Moved content about chart series scripting from the Data source property to dedicated topic Scripting a Chart Series
  • New events are now documented to allow interaction between a chart and other charts or controls on a screen:
    • Live Update Changed — Called when the chart's live update setting changes
    • Pan Offset Changed — Called when the chart's pan offset values change
    • Zoom Changed — Called when the chart's zoom values change
  • A new background color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability
  • Enhanced the organization of the Chart topics

• Combo Box — The following features are now documented:
  • A new color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability
• CygNet Grid — The following features are now documented:
  • Custom context menu items
  • Grid row summaries
  • A new background, text, and border color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Detail — The following features are now documented:
  • Custom context menu items
  • Auto color option for background color, text color, and icon color source
  • A new background and text color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Default Chart — The following features are now documented:
  • Historical rollups, configured on the screen
  • Default Series appearance properties are now configurable for a screen, including: Label background color, Label connector color, Label text color, Point size, Series type, Show point labels, and Show points

• Donut — The following features are now documented:
  • Minimum Setpoint and Maximum Setpoint options have been added to the Value bounds configuration for the lower and upper value bounds for an associated analog point
  • Custom context menu items
  • A new background, text, ring, empty ring, and marker color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Edit Box — now supports multi-line text entry. The following properties are now documented:
  • Accepts return
  • Vertical alignment

• Heat Map — The following features are now documented:
  • A new background color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Image — The following features are now documented:
  • Custom context menu items
  • Image sizing properties have been added to allow you to control the size of the image independently from the size of the control, display a smaller image in a nominal case, and a larger, different image in the case of an alarm. A Size mode property (ImageSizeMode) has been added so that bitmap and vector images will scale without distortion. Additionally read-only Image height (ImageHeight) and Image width (ImageWidth) properties have been added to display the raw image dimensions for informational purpose only.

• Linear Gauges — The following features are now documented:
  • Custom context menu items
  • Minimum Setpoint and Maximum Setpoint options have been added to the Value bounds configuration for the lower and upper value bounds for an associated analog point
  • A new background, text, empty bar, and bar color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Object Container — The following features are now documented:
  • Added a Paging enabled property to provide a pagination interface in run mode top page through objects that exceed the Object limit property
  • A new background color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Relative Facility Tree — This new navigation control is now documented

• Search Box — Made some minor updates to Selection Action via script to bring the documentation into line with new Relative Facility Tree

• Screen/Object — The following features are now documented:
  • You can now dynamically add and remove controls to a screen via script during runtime using the AddControl and RemoveControl methods
  • Screens now have a configuration context menu and support custom context menu items
  • Screens now support historical rollups for the default chart
  • Screens now support appearance properties for the default chart series
  • Some property categories have been reorganized and renamed
  • A method, ShowPopup, that creates a popup at the mouse location on the screen containing an object specified in the parameters. The path can be either a Canvas screen file (.can) or Canvas object file (.cob).
  • A new background and layout grid color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Shape — The following properties are now documented:
  • Custom context menu items
  • Stretch
  • A new fill, text, and line color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability
  • A new topic on how to configure custom shapes (added July 2, 2021)

• Sparkline — The following properties are now documented:
  • A new background color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Tag Chooser — The following features are now documented:
  • Ignore UDCs property added to specify a comma-separated list of UDCs to hide when displaying points

• Text Tool — The following new features are now documented:
  • Border width
  • Custom context menu items
  • A new background, text, and border color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Tile View — The following new feature is now documented:
  • A new control background, and detail background and text color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

• Tree Map — The following features are now documented:
  • A new background color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability
  • Clarified how the tree map displays unsupported values when the Filter type options is used

• Value Indicator —
  • Custom context menu items
  • Minimum Setpoint and Maximum Setpoint options have been added to the Value bounds configuration for the lower and upper value bounds for an associated analog point
  • A new background, text, marker border, and marker fill color configuration option, <Auto>, is available to support screen portability

Canvas Scripting

• Added a new topic about dynamically adding controls
• Added a new topic about scripting a chart series (content was moved from series Data source property)
• Added topics about scripting custom context menu items, historic playback bar, and layers
• Added a description of how Canvas uses temporary folder and files names (added July 2, 2021)
• Added a new information about converting pre-v9.5 Canvas screens to a new script format and a topic using the CanvasFileConverter utility to perform bulk conversions (added July 2, 2021)
• Updated Hyperlinking script example to correctly reference the CygNetConfiguration object for Facility and SiteService (added July 2, 2021)