LabVIEW screen resolution issues

[ChrisK88]

Hey All,

I am having a serious screen resolution or something else problem.. whenever I open anyones VI it seems to be making every piece of text bigger (like Bundle By Name text, as an example) to where it's making all my co-workers VIs seem like they are squished together where as they open it on ANY of their PCs/laptops it looks fine. I've tried copying LabVIEW.ini file from one of their machines to mine but it stil doesn't fix my issue. 

It is almost unbearable as we develop large applications with lots of stuff going on in the BD and FP..

Anyone know a way I can fix it, it seems to be in LabVIEW only, webpages open up fine, TestStand opens up fine, etc. 

[James.M]

If it's only text that is affected, have you tried messing with the fonts in Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts?

[ChrisK88]

Yes I have, "Use defaunlt font" checkbox is sellected for Application, Dialog and System, and even if I make the font smaller, the text within the stuff like Bundle by Name doesn't get smaller. I'm merely assuming that's a symptom of the overall problem when I open up already created VIs from same brand of company laptops. 

[RavensFan · Accepted solution]

Search the forums for messages about Windows fonts.

Any chance you are using a different OS than they are?  Is it possible you have the built-in windows font size set to something larger like 125% and they have it set to normal?

[ChrisK88]

RavensFan, 

Will search. We are all using Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit SP1. 

[ChrisK88]

RavensFan,

You are a savior, the default Windows font was set to 125%, causing all sorts of ruckus!!!

Time to get have a few "words" with IT..

[RavensFan]

It may not have been IT's fault.  Probably microsoft's fault.

Any chance you are using a different size monitor than the others?  I'm not sure, but I think Windows might default to the bigger fonts if it detects you are using a higher resolution screen.  I feel like it is something that would have been set automatically back when Windows was installed.

[ChrisK88]

You know what, that might be the case, I have a 1920 x 1080 laptop, but monitors only go to 1280 x 1024, so aspect ratio goes from 16:9 to 5:4.

I'm going to mess aorund and see without monitors and text sizing to find the best solution.

[RavensFan]

Ultimately, the best solution is to put lines like this in yours and the other people's LabVIEW.ini files.

FPFont="Tahoma" 13
AppFont="Tahoma" 13
DialogFont="Tahoma" 13
SystemFont="Tahoma" 13
BDFont="Tahoma" 13

It locks the fonts into settings that don't map back to Windows symbolic fonts that change with each version of the OS.

(But I'm not sure if it still looks at the font "size" of large vs. normal of 125% or 100% even with these settings.)

I learned the hard way years ago about how MS changed their default fonts and especially the font size when I developed an an XP machine, then ported to a Win7 machine and the front panel items no longer lined up and everything was bigger.  Even wires on the block diagram grew extra bends because older windows used 8 point fonts by default and the new Windows version jumped to 9 pt fonts.

(note the size of fonts within LabVIEW such as 13 and 15 don't map directly into Windows 1 for 1 which calls them 8 and 9.)

Look at http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW-Idea-Exchange/Font-size-standardization/idi-p/1405022 and be sure to vote for that idea.  (But it does say it is now in develoment.)

[ChrisK88]

I do think that's a great idea for standardization, to ensure all fonts are the same regardless of LV Version and OS Version. This coupled with the Windows Default Font Size change to 100% will ensure no one else will have my error. 

I gave a kudo to that link, seems like PT in LabVIEW equates to pixel, which is just wrong lol, let's hope LV 2016 brings a closure to this 🙂