LabVIEW
Blurry icon text
Solved!
@1984 wrote:
Hi,
I'm running LV2020 under Win10 and the icon texts are getting blurry. This is not a new problem, I have found two topics about it here at ni.com (this and this)
I think I have tried pretty much everything:
- turned cleartype off
- installed small fonts again
- Change region to US (suggested on one of the knowledgebase pages)
- Added small fonts to the labview.ini
- Disabled "Smooth edges on screen fonts"
Disabling cleartype and smooth edges improved the situation a bit, but my icon texts still dont look the same as on PCs I have labview installed. The characters are not evenly spaced and eg "S" looks like an ugly "8". Definitely worse than what I have on win7
Any new ideas about this?
Thanks!
Example: icon should say "PRESS" looks like this:
Actually the characters are evenly spaced, it's just that the P and R are narrower than the E and S. That probably confuses whatever is spacing out the characters (maybe it's only looking at the width of an A then adding a pixel). If you select a font where all of the characters are exactly the same width, I bet the problem will go away.
Small fonts are selected. Just do show precisely whats going on:
1. Both cleartype and "smooth edges on screen fonts" are ON:
2. Cleartype is OFF, "smooth edges on screen fonts" is ON:
3. Both cleartype and "smooth edges on screen fonts" are OFF:
Between the setting I have never closed the icon editor window and did not change anything in it, so the different looks came from the different settings. Small fonts were selected. I have two instances in the font selector menu (as somebody mentioned this before), but both looks the same for me.
@1984 wrote:
Small fonts are selected. Just do show precisely whats going on:
1. Both cleartype and "smooth edges on screen fonts" are ON:
2. Cleartype is OFF, "smooth edges on screen fonts" is ON:
3. Both cleartype and "smooth edges on screen fonts" are OFF:
Between the setting I have never closed the icon editor window and did not change anything in it, so the different looks came from the different settings. Small fonts were selected. I have two instances in the font selector menu (as somebody mentioned this before), but both looks the same for me.
I don't know what to say about that. I don't think "small fonts" is supposed to be an aliased font. And as I mentioned earlier, I had two instances - one was aliased, one was not. So I don't know what to do. 😞
@paul_cardinale wrote:
OK, I tried. No luck though: I can't stop hating text-based icons.
Two LabVIEW practitioners, two Icon philosophies! I always (well, 99% of the time, except for throw-away tiny "try-it-out" code temporarily saved as "Untitled 1") create Icons for my sub-VIs and TypeDefs, and they are almost always Text-based (as I find them easier to distinguish, and much easier for my colleagues who are trying to follow my code to understand).
My Icon Editor settings are as follows:
Font: Small Fonts
Alignment: Center, 10 (point)
Center text vertical: Checked
Capitalize Text: Unchecked
Settings for Text Tool:
Font: Small Fonts
Alignment: Center, 9 (point)
I create Icon Templates with an 8-pixel "Top Box" that might have an Identifier in it (such as "TYPE", which will be in 9-point Type as it was created using the Text Tool) and with a solid Background (I use Yellow for Host code, light blue for Real-Time code, pink for "Common" code (used by both Host and Target/Real-Time). This Icon has room for 3 lines of Text, 7-8 letters each. Here are some examples:
This is a sub-VI called "UTIL Create UI Message" (one could argue that the prefix "UTIL" is unnecessary -- I won't disagree, but it grew out of looking at colleague's code where one needed to look at the Extension to know if the file was a sub-VI or a TypeDef, to say nothing if it might have been the Top-Level VI). Note that the 10-point not-all-Cap text in the box (only two lines here, which LabVIEW nicely spaces) is easily read. The light-blue background of the sub-VI's Icon reminds me that this is meant for the Real-Time section of the Project, while the Pink Icon of the TypeDef says this is in the Common section where the TypeDef can be used by both Host and Target code. Note that the TypeDef for UI Message is a Cluster, and I've used a "feature" introduced about a decade ago (?) that a Cluster TypeDef on the Block Diagram can have its border double-clicked to be replaced by its Icon, making it especially useful if an Icon has been defined. I've put in the Idea Exchange a plea for NI to extend this to other TypeDefs, especially Array TypeDefs, but so far, No Go.
Bob Schor
For the comparision I have used 15p small fonts on the icon as well as in a comment on the block diagram. Here comes the result:
In the icon editor the text is "anti aliased". As it looks pretty much the same for me in the icon and in a comment I assume that it does the same for the text tool as well. At 15p the text is very readable, I dont mind the smoother edges. But obviously 15p is way too large for icon text. With 9p though the text is way too blurry.
Reinstalling small fonts may solve the problem, but I can't do that, as its a system font. I have installed the font I have seen in a different topic (link included in the orignal post) as some said that solved their problem. Not for me 😞
