I noticed that in the latest version of KNIME (2.5.0) the menu command for adding a description to a meta node is missing. (I'm using Win7).
...And when I open a workflow created in a previous version of KNIME that contains meta nodes with descriptions, I notice the description has been appended to the node 'label' (the formerly 1-line of text below the node). At first this wasn't immediately noticeable, because in 2.5.0 only the previous labels are initially visible, but when I try to edit the labels, that's when I see the whole description appended to the label and if I make any edits to the label, when I finish the edit, the label plus the description is then visible when I finish editing(!)
I found it very useful in previous KNIME versions to have separate labels and descriptions for meta nodes. I often used the meta node's description field to add many lines of notes or instructions , while reserving the label for a very short description of the meta node's function.
Would you kindly consider restoring separate description fields for meta nodes? (By the way, other than what I described, I love the new support for multi-line labels; thanks!).
This change also applies to regular nodes. The multiline is nice but I too would like to have both a label and a more extended "hidden" description that pops up when you mouse over the label as it did in the prior version of Knime.
Another issue with the new labels is that I cannot seem to copy-paste text into them from the clip board. I was sure I could do this in the old label / descriptions. I find this very helpful.
To make it even more annoying, when you do try to paste what it does is copy the last nodes etc, that you copied in Knime into the workflow instead of the text that I had put on the clipboard to paste into the label/description.
Yet another one (which the KNIMErs know already, just for everyone else's benefit): the "F2" shortcut only works if the label is selected, not when the node icon is. It also does not mark all the node text for easy overwriting. Both should happen to follow common conventions, I think.
thanks for all your feedback so quickly after our release!
The F2 Ctrl-C/V issues will be fixed - that's something that fell through the cracks when we added the multi line labels.
As for the node labels/descriptions - we did not see a need for those anymore now that multi line labels are supported so we decided to merge those. We were maybe a bit too "innovative" here when removing the seperate descriptions from metanodes at that point...
Yes, we will put descriptions back in - in a more unified way so that they apply the same for nodes, metanodes, and entire projects. It's more than just a bug fix, unfortunately, as the change from simple node labels to entire node annotations (you can now enter multi line node labels and format them just like the workflow annotations) has brought with it the merger of the previous "label"+"description".
So we are hoping that the new added functionality is a bit of a comfort for the loss of descriptions?
Thanks Michael. I've made another discovery in my pursuit of proper metadata management - copy&pasting of descriptions doesn't work any longer (on Windows), or at least Cutting (with Ctrl+X) doesn't. I didn't try traditional Shift+Del (cut) or others, though.
UPDATE:: My mistake - the pop up is still there but you have to mouse over the right part of the node - the icon for node or the space right below it. If you mouse over the status bar or the label it does not pop up.
Thanks for putting the descriptions back in separate from the labels. You did leave out one important aspect however. The description no longer "pops up" when you mouse over the node / label like it used to. It is very annoying to have to select the node and click on the label/description icon in order to see the more detailed description of the node. Please put this feature back as well. Thanks !!