LabVIEW
Blurred text in icons
Solved!
I like the antialiased fonts, but they have one big problem currently: They always antialias towards white, not the actual background! So, as it stands, either write text in the graphical tool, or dont use antialiased fonts. If it'd work better i'd always use Tratex black. 🙂
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@Yamaeda wrote:
I like the antialiased fonts, but they have one big problem currently: They always antialias towards white, not the actual background! So, as it stands, either write text in the graphical tool, or dont use antialiased fonts. If it'd work better i'd always use Tratex black. 🙂
Cleartype has many other shortcomings, for example try it on a monitor that can be turned to portrait orientation (or a tablet!). Cleartype will only work in landscape mode of course.
Many companies are now coming out with ultra high resolution notebook screens (e.g. 13.3 inch at 3200x1800!!) where this can be handled much more gracefully. Hardware technology will make this software kludge irrelevant in the future.
Of course pixel based graphics such as the LabVIEW block diagram, front panel, or icon will probably be unusable on something like that at native resolution (we would need to cut down the display resolution settings or use a microscope :o). Has anyone played with this? LabVIEW clearly needs to get away from a pixel based rendering in the future!
Good point, Cleartype will have to revert to full pixel antialiasing if in portrait mode. Still, no matter what the resolution, i think cleartype will stay, as you can always use 3x higher resolution. 😄
You're actually making a good suggestion, if you're not aware of it, texts in icons should stay as a true type text layer and not become a bitmap, maybe icons should be changed to some form of eps so they can scale regardless of resolution? Now this would be more of a windows suggestion than LV, but the text idea might be possible to implement.
(Tratex being the font used on Swedish road signs, i downloaded it and tried it in the icon editor and really liked the result)
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This has to be a bug. I have attached a VI that uses the LabVIEW Icon API to type some text. I tested in LabVIEW 2010, 11, 12, 14 and the text always uses white for background instead of transparent. If it would have used transparent for background, the text would have rendered correctly.
This can be corrected if you open "lv_icon.lvlib:draw Picture based on Origin.vi" and bypass "lv_icon.lvlib:Apply Transparency.vi" . The transparency will be correct and the font will be correctly rendered, independent of background color.
For LV2011+, you will need to downloaded the source files for the Icon API to be able to change it.
The attached image shows the difference between white and transparent as background for the text. It's such a huge difference. I searched the forums but could not find a CAR for this.
hello
did anyone solve the problem? Recently my icon editor text got blurry and even after reinstalling Windwos & Labview the problem remains on fresh Windows copy!!!
I have Windwos 10 pro updated & Labview 2015 f2 (the newest stuff), Intel HD graphic card.. The problem occured suddenly in the beggining of the new year. maybe because of some windows update or graphic card update. I don't know exactly.
Problem happens on Labview 2015 and Labview 2014SP1. It doesn't matter if i use cleartype or not in windows. It is no matter which font i use in Icon Editor. All of them are blurry! (see attched picture).
Additional issue is that when i enter the text and it is too long for the icon the text is not hidden under the icon frame but immediately cut.
LabVIEW uses "small fonts" for the icon by default. Is that what you are using? Just about anything else you use will be some sort of anti-aliased font which, I guess, becomes rasterized when applied to the icon. That's why it looks like that.
The problem in my sitiution is that I have to use English system locale for non-unicode programs (instead of my local language Polish). I do not understand it, but after i changed it, the icon editor starts to operate normally...
of course in Icon Editor i can use only Small Fonts. The other fonts are still blurry.
