PCAN-View: Copy function for received and transmitted messages is broken

[jarmisteadgal]

Using PCAN-View 4.3.2.605 on Windows 10

If I select a received message with message CAN-ID 18200700h, with length of 2 and data of 02 00, and then right-click and choose Copy, or press Ctrl-C, and then paste it into Notepad (or right here on this forum) I get the following:

ID=404752128x,Type=D,Length=2,Data=02

Two things are obviously wrong.

1. The CAN-ID format in the PCAN-View GUI is in hexadecimal, so I want the copied data to also be in hexadecimal, i.e. 18200700h. Instead, it is converted to decimal as 404752128x, which then means I have to manually re-convert it back to hexadecimal. The copy function should copy the as-displayed data, rather than copying it to the Windows Clipboard in a different format.

2. The data is missing the second data byte, i.e. 00. If I have a message with non-zero data at the end, all the data bytes are copied to the Windows Clipboard correctly. It seems that the software is not respecting the Length (CAN DLC field) when copying. Ideally, similar to what I mentioned for item #1 (above), the format of the data should also be the same as the GUI.

It would be nice to have an option whereby the data bytes are also copied with either spaces or commas between them. This would make it easier to read.

NOTE: The same issues occur when copying Received and Transmitted messages.

Now for the next set of issues, consider this transmitted message:

ID=411042560x,Type=D,Length=7,Data=18140C18181850,IDFormat=hex,Comment="Sample message"

This raises some additional issues:

3. Notice the field "IDFormat=hex". This says that the ID is in hexadecimal, yet the format is clearly decimal (with the "x" suffix). If it was hexadecimal, then it would be 18800300h

4. Changing the PCAN-View GUI so that the message CAN-ID format is changed to decimal (i.e. right-click on message, then choose CAN-ID Format = Decimal), then Copy it again. Now if that is pasted, we get:

ID=411042560x,Type=D,Length=7,Data=18140C18181850,IDFormat=dec,Comment="Sample message"

So the "IDFormat=" field is reflecting what is shown in the GUI, but it is NOT changing the format of the "ID=" field

5. Notice also that for received messages, when the Copy function is used, the "IDFormat=" field is missing entirely. It seems like there is a strong (and reasonable) case that PCAN-View should *ALWAYS* include this when copying to the Windows Clipboard, *AND* that there should be an additional "DataFormat=" field so that the data format can also be copied using the format shown in the GUI (which can be Hexadecimal, Decimal and ASCII)


Any changes to the Copy functionality would also need to be tested with the Paste functionality, when pasting a message into the Transmit part of the GUI (lower half), so that it didn't matter whether the CAN-ID and Data bytes were in hexadecimal, decimal or (for the Data bytes) in ASCII.


I appreciate the functionality of PCAN-View, but feel that by fixing these issues, it would be even better and more usable.

[M.Heidemann]

Hello,

Thank you for your request.

This feature is not broken, it just has a completely different purpose.

Try the following: copy any message either in the receive or transmit window and paste it into the transmit list of another PCAN-View
instance, you'll see the message is properly copied over.

It is not intended as a proper data-export, it is supposed to make it easy to copy
individual messages from one PEAK-application to another.

PCAN-View does not offer a feature like this, but our software PCAN-Explorer 6
can export Trace-files into different formats, such as CSV or TXT-format.

For further questions feel free to contact us again.

Best Regards

Marvin

[jarmisteadgal]

Hello Marvin

Thank you for your prompt reply to my post. I appreciate what you have written, but feel that if that is the intended purpose (i.e. only to be used by PCAN-View), then it needs to be more clearly documented in the Help for PCAN-View.

At the moment, the Help doesn't mention anything about NOT being able to use the data for other purposes. It just says the data is copied to the clipboard (see attached screenshot) which leaves it rather vague and open to people (like me) misunderstanding how it can (or can't) be used.

PCAN-View Help file information

PCAN-VIew Help Cut-Copy-Paste.png (55.21 KiB) Viewed 10678 times

My original purpose was very simple, i.e. just to copy the hexadecimal message ID or data from the PCAN-View Receive or Transmit pane into an e-mail or Word document, so that I can share this with a colleague.

At the moment, I have to either re-type the message ID by hand, or take the decimal representation from the Clipboard and use something like the Windows 10 Calculator application to convert it back into hexadecimal again.

I see that there is the ability to save the Trace data as a TRC file (version 1.1). That was something I had not yet realized. It would be another way to do what I want to do, but it involves a lot more steps, i.e. stop the trace, then press save, select a folder and filename, then open the resulting TRC file with a text editor, and then finally, copy and paste the data.

I appreciate the PCAN-View is the "little brother" of more powerful tools like PCAN-Explorer 6 (which I already have a license and USB dongle for), but still feel that my request is a reasonable one, and something I've been able to do previously with other free CANbus tools.

Maybe I should have changed the post subject to something like "Feature request" instead of saying "... is broken"?

Best regards
Jason

[M.Heidemann]

Hello Jason,

We do appreciate your feedback.

I#Ll inquire about making the documentation more clear regarding this.

I could move the topic to our forum-section "Suggestions & Feature Requests",
if you are okay with that.

You also have the ability to save Transmit-List via the File dialog -> "Save" and save your transmit list
as a .xmt file which can be shared with other users, this is also a text-file.

The Transmit-list contains the hexdecimal CAN-IDs.

I'll relay this feature request to our development team for evaluation.

Best Regards

Marvin

[jarmisteadgal]

Hello Marvin

I agree with moving this thread to "Suggestions & Feature Requests".

The changes I am asking for would make PCAN-View a little more useful for those "quick experiments" where users don't need the full features and complexity of PCAN Explorer 6.

I already knew that it was possible to copy from the Receive list to the Transmit list, and had used the Save function to save the transmit list as an XMT file. This is definitely another alternative work-around, but it still requires extra steps of:

1. Copy from Receive list to clipboard
2. Paste from clipboard to Transmit list
3. Save Transmit list to XMT file
4. Open XMT file with text editor
5. Copy from text editor to clipboard
6. Paste from clipboard to my e-mail, document, etc. to share with others
7. Do minor editing of pasted text to remove data that I don't want to share

That's much more complex than my proposed solution of:

1. Copy from Receive list to clipboard using the selected formatting of the Message ID and data
2. Paste from clipboard to my e-mail, document, etc. to share with others
3. Do minor editing of pasted text to remove data that I don't want to share

Thank you for your willingness to listen to customer feedback!

Best regards
Jason Armistead

[M.Heidemann]

Hello Jason,

Thank you for your sugesstion.

We have received your feature request and will elavuate it.

I'll notify you in case the feature will be greenlit and will be part of
a future relase of PCAN-View.

Best Regards

Marvin