LabWindows CVI GUI Problems on XP Embedded

[Paul_Tran]

I've developed a CVI 9.0 application which runs fine on XP Pro.  On an XP Embedded system, however, when the application is launched the GUI came up but it appeared that all the text labels were missing and some of the controls didn't show up right.  I could click on any of the the controls and the application did what it was designed to do.  I thought maybe some of the font files were missing so I copied all the font files from the XP Pro system and installed them on the XP Embedded system but it did not fix the problem.

See attached screenshots...

I've developed an application with CVI 6.0 eight years ago for an XP Embedded system and it runs fine on the same XP Embedded system.

Has anyone seen this problem?

[John_P1]

Hi Paul,

I have not seen this behavior before, but keep in mind XP Embedded is not one of the officially supported operating systems for CVI 9.0 so we have not performed any extensive testing.

I wish I could be of more help--do other applications look different as well or is this problem unique to CVI?

-John

[Ian.W]

Just a wild guess here, but have you tinkered with some of system-related panel attributes? (e.g. "Conform to System Colors", or "Use Windows Visual Styles")

--Ian

[Paul_Tran]

Thanks for the inputs.

I've figured out what the problem was.  The CVI fonts (for labels, text, etc....), by default, use the Native character set and my XP Embedded image somehow doesn't recognize this character set.  I've changed the font on a couple of the controls to use the Western character set and they all showed up fine.  My problem is I don't want to have to go through and change this for every individual control in my GUI.  Further more, I will not be able to account for the Popup controls.  I'm trying to figure out how to apply this globally.

Does anybody know how to change the character set globally?

[John_P1]

Hi Paul,

Good find on the character set--you can use the SetPanelCharacterSet function to set the character set to be used on all of the objects of a front panel:

This should be more convenient than going through one object at a time and manually setting the fonts.

Best Regards,

John

[Paul_Tran]

Thanks again John for your response.

I've already tried this but I'm still having the same problems with my Easy tab control labels and Popup messages.  I wonder if there's a single call that would allow me to apply this change globally.

[gvan]

I don't know if this is directly related, but I have had similar font problems that I've seen only after 9.0.0.  On some installs of regular XP pro, in multiple apps, controls using the 7SEG font end up drawing HUGE (thousands of pixels high so far as I can tell) and, and don't show anything.  I haven't spent much time debugging this, but switching to a standard true type font fixed it.  I have had to go back and remove all uses of 7SEG font from some older applications.  I've blamed it on a problem with the way CVI is using/rendering its metafonts.

The problem doesn't show up on my development machines, but as luck would have it, did show up all in most deployments.  In at least one case, it didn't show up until I ran an installer (installing a new CVI RTE) but had been working (with possibly and older RTE) when I was copying the .exe.  I don't know what exactly, but I think something about rendering/selecting fonts has  changed in the RTE after 9.0.

Greg 

[Paul_Tran]

Hi Greg,

I'm having the same suspicion but don't have enough proof yet to make that conclusion.  Just as I mentioned in my original post, I had no problem with running an older application that was developed with CVI 6.0.

Thanks for your input.

[Paul_Tran]

I've just found another piece of info that I want to share which I hope my shed some light into my problems.  I compared the Edit Label Attributes for one of the controls in CVI 6.0 and CVI 9.0 and I noticed that the newer CVI has the option to select Character Set whereas CVI 6.0 does not.  I need to find out what has to be configured correctly on the OS side in order for the new CVI RTE to render the fonts properly.

[Paul_Tran · Accepted solution]

I've resolved the issue simply by going into Regional & Language Options Advanced and switched to English (United Kingdom) then back to English (US) and that some how fixed my problems.