Preserve Comments in column formulas

[nathan-clark]

What inspired this wish list request? 

Losing information in column formulas when I'm troubleshooting or explaining a complex jsl is lost when things are commented out

What is the improvement you would like to see? 

It's important because I like to troubleshoot column formulas with show/print commands and i don't want to have to redo all that work every time if i save time/overhead by commenting out lines when they are not immediately needed

Why is this idea important? 

It's important because column formulas can become complex and it's important to have good tracking of what a formula does as well as being able to easily troubleshoot when time time arises.

[nathan-clark]

.... ummm, i have no idea what happened here. All my text showed in the preview, but posted blank?

Ok, in short:

Losing information in column formulas when I'm troubleshooting or explaining a complex jsl is lost when things are commented out
It's important because I like to troubleshoot column formulas with show/print commands and i don't want to have to redo all that work every time if i save time/overhead by commenting out lines when they are not immediately needed
It's important because column formulas can become complex and it's important to have good tracking of what a formula does as well as being able to easily troubleshoot when time time arises.

[Craige_Hales]

@nathan-clark yes, lost text happened to me on a recent wish as well. I assumed I hit the wrong button, a gui issue perhaps, but...it was too easy to lose it.  @Ryan_Gilmore

[nathan-clark]

@Craige_Hales Agreed... seems to be there now, so maybe it was never gone, I just couldn't see it 

[Jeff_Perkinson]

@nathan-clark, I edited your original post and added the text from your comment. 

[nathan-clark]

@Jeff_Perkinson Thanks!

[mia_stephens]

Hi @nathan-clark , thank you for this request. This has come up before. The basic problem is that we currently don't have a way store comments with formulas. 

It would be good to know how important this is to your and your organization, and to other JMP users, as this is likely a difficult problem to solve.

[Craige_Hales]

This sticks, but is very clumsy to write.

[nathan-clark]

@mia_stephens I would love to say that this is mission critical to the very fiber of my being, but it's more on the high annoyance list. Seems to me from a "jsl perspective" saving the comments should be easy. Clearly the implementation into formulas isn't a complete drag/drop, so I'm ok if this isn't top of mind. I am the only one at my company who I've noticed has really complained.

I also have a work around or two..... @Craige_Hales That also looks like an even better work around, especially if i want to maintain, but comment out print/show commands. My way was just creating a variable that I didn't use but had a string for the long comment i may want to make.

Thanks for taking a look though, and hopefully within a few versions there may be a better solution at your finger tips.

[mia_stephens]

@nathan-clark given the discussion, @Craige_Hales workaround and current development priorities, we'll mark this as not planned for now but will revisit later.