Wednesday, July 01, 2009

The Order of Parameters - Revisited

This seems to come up now and again so I've decided to post what I wrote at AUGI this evening here too...echo echo. Regarding the eternal question, "Can I change the order of the parameters in the Family Editor?"

I wrote THIS POST in November 2007. Scott Hopkins shared a tip at AUGI and the post includes a link for that thread at AUGI.

Parameters are "stacked" as you create them, the "oldest" goes on the bottom, in the group you assign it to. It doesn't matter whether you use alpha or numeric etc...oldest goes on the bottom. If you create several "placeholders" like XXXX, XXX, XX, XX you can create them and then rename them so they appear in the desired order. This assumes that you know what you need and how many as you start out, easier said than done.

Scott's technique will help after the fact. None of these will help when you use shared parameters however...for those you have to "live" with where they land. Naming parameters with common names first followed by differentiators will help keep related parameters together.

Wish it were as easy as "move up/ move down"...or drag to reorder...it should be

2 comments:

iru69 said...

In my experience, letters will appear at the top of the stack and numbers will appear at the bottom of the stack. So, if I'm creating new parameters, I'll name them 'a', 'b', 'c'... if I want them to appear at the top of the stack. I'll name them '0', '1', '2'... if I want them to appear at the bottom of the stack. I then of course rename them afterward. Same deal with Hopkin's trick '*'.

But, man, being able to re-order parameters on the fly (as well as hide them) is one of my top wishes.

Steve said...

Good additional subtlety and parameters that start with a number go below those that start with a letter.

I have observed that there is some sort of alphabetical behavioral rule too, for example when you create a parameter that starts with "e" and then create one that starts with "a", the "a" parameter ends up below the "e" parameter in the list.

The real point of the post I suppose is to suggest that having to be familiar with some arcane order "rules" to get parameters in a desired order is silly...just let us reorder them by dragging or using the familiar though clunky "move up" "move down" buttons in schedules.