LabVIEW Idea Exchange

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Bob_Schor

Greater Transparency in Setting Default Fonts for Development and for Execution

Status: New

Re-opening because LabVIEW NXG has been discontinued.

I'm developing some software for a colleague, to run on (one of) his machines.  I do my best to follow Good LabVIEW Practices, including using Version Control (SVN) to maintain my code.  Hence my Project "jumps" from computer to computer.

 

I recently noticed an old problem re-appear, namely occasional Front Panel and Block Diagram labels appearing in a different Font Size (18) than I've set as the default on my Office Desktop and home Laptop (15).  This was really irritating (especially having to find those wayward labels and "fix" them), forcing me to re-examine the Where and How of setting Default Fonts in LabVIEW.

 

This still appears to be a Dark Art, one (perhaps) involving LabVIEW.ini (and some undocumented keys, not present in the "vanilla" configuration file).  There appear to be several such INI files, with LabVIEW.ini attuned for development, and an INI file in the Data folder of a built Executable for that Executable.  But still, the values are bereft of documentation (i.e. documentation is conspicuous by its absence) and not everything is explained (like why some values are in quotes, what they mean, and how one sets a specific Font, e.g. Arial).

 

One thing that I, in particular, would like to see would be the ability to set the Font Defaults on a Project basis.  For myself, I "own" the Project, and would want it to have a consistent Font (size) on all my VIs (unless I specifically decide to Emphasize something), no matter on what machine I develop them and when.  If I have to set the Font Default on a machine-wide basis, then every time I develop on my colleague's PC, I'd have to (a) note his settings, (b) change them to mine, and (c) remember to set them back when I finish.  As such sessions are often an hour here, an hour there, this "machine-centric" setting becomes a nuisance fast.

 

I recently had the opportunity to discuss this with an NI Applications Engineer, who assisted me in finding (some of) the obscure references to Font Setting Tricks.  I noted that a lot of what the Community knows seems to come from "Reverse-Engineering" NI's settings, and that some Documentation and Standardization (let's get away from designating Fonts as "1", "2", or "3", which have no intrinsic meaning, please) would be a good idea.  Hence this LabVIEW Idea.

 

Bob Schor

9 Comments
Darren
Proven Zealot
Status changed to: In Development
 
Bob_Schor
Knight of NI

Thanks, Darren.  Judging by postings in LAVA and on the Forums, this has been a sore point for years ...

 

BS

Blokk
Trusted Enthusiast

Yep, this bit me not a long time ago. After moving our project to another laptop, the fonts were horrible! 🙂 I am happy this is in dev now...

Darren
Proven Zealot
Status changed to: Completed

Available in LabVIEW NXG 1.0. Font settings in the NXG editor are explicit, so there is no longer a need to manage "system" fonts.

Blokk
Trusted Enthusiast

To be honest, I am a bit confused now. I thought when we suggest ideas here, they are intended to be implemented (or not) in a next version of LabVIEW. Now this idea is implemented, but in NXG 1.0. I understand that NI most probably will merge together these now parallel products (LV and NXG) in the future, but recently we have two different products still. So my question is that, this idea got implemented for NXG 1.0, but refused to be implemented in LabVIEW 2018?

Just for pure curiosity... 🙂

Darren
Proven Zealot

You are correct that with the release of LabVIEW NXG 1.0, there are now two parallel product platforms going forward. When assessing the feasibility and popularity of ideas on the idea exchange, LabVIEW R&D may choose to implement ideas in one or both of the products (or neither).

Blokk
Trusted Enthusiast

Darren, thanks for the clear statement!

AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

Adding onto Darren's comments... NXG was created specifically because some of the requests were not feasible in the existing code base. There was simply too much legacy code (image sizes done as integers instead of floats and even hardcoded pixel distances both play havoc with zoom, for example). NXG is the next generation of LabVIEW, and eventually, the existing product line will be renamed and the new one will simply be "LabVIEW". That day is a good while away, but as LabVIEW NXG gains power, it will be the place were some of these ideas come to fruition.

Christina_R
Active Participant
Status changed to: New

Re-opening because LabVIEW NXG has been discontinued.


Christina Rogers
Principal Product Owner, LabVIEW R&D