Intensity Graph Zoom Tools Border Disappears

[Steve_G]

Hi.  I'm using Labview 8.0 to program my application in Windows XP.  I am using intensity graphs to display my data.  To the side of the graph are the graph tools:  Cursor Control, Zoom Control, and Pan Control.  When I run the software on my laptop everything looks ok.  However, when I run the built application on my customers tool and I select the Zoom Control, there is no border around the Zoom Control box.  Please look at the attached jpg to more clearly see what I'm trying to describe.  Can anyone give me ideas about how to get the border back?  Thanks.

[DuffmanSays]

Hi Steve,

There can often be discrepancies with the display of certain controls from one computer to another. This normally occurs when the controls used are from the "System" pallet. These controls have a reduced set of properties to customize because many of these properties are set by the operating system settings. This is most likely not the cause in this case because there is no intensity chart available as a System control. However, I would still be interested to know if there are any special settings on your customer's OS that might affect display. Does the customer use a reduced number of colors on their system than you have on your development machine? Is the customer running Windows XP?

You mentioned that the VI and the executable do not show this behavior on your machine. Have you examined the behavior of the VI on your customer's machine? This would tell us whether the problem is related to the indicator itself or with the built executable. Have you tested this exe on any other machines running the same operating system that your customer is using? I would be interested if this behavior is repeated. Also, are there any other display discrepancies or is this behavior limited to this feature of the intensity chart?

Please post back so that we can get to the bottom of this! Thanks a lot for your time,

Mike D.
National Instruments
Applications Engineer

[Steve_G]

Thanks for getting back to me.  I took your advice and checked my customer's computer.  I checked their Display Properties and under the Settings tab they had their color quality set to Medium (16 bit).  I checked my laptop and its set to Highest (32 bit), so I changed my settings to Medium (16 bit).  This was the only parameter that I changed.  Before I made this change, both the vi and the built application worked fine on my laptop.  After I changed to 16 bit, both the vi and the application displayed the same behavior as the customer tool:  there was no border around the zoom tools.  I switched back my settings to 32 bit and now the vi works properly (border around the zoom tools) but the built application still shows no border!  I shut down my laptop and restarted it and its still the same way: the vi is ok, but the application is wrong.  Can you help me out with this?  Thanks!

Steve

[DuffmanSays]

Steve,

I am glad to hear that we are narrowing down the problem, but this is still quite strange behavior. Hopefully we will be able to determine how to work around this behavior very soon. I was not able to locate any known issues concerning the intensity graph in LabVIEW executables.  

While trying to recreate this problem, I created a simple VI that writes to an intensity graph. I built this VI into an executable, and then examined the zoom tools of the intensity graph. I did notice that the zoom tools in the executable did not have a border regardless of my color setting (32-bit or 16-bit). I then attempted to upgrade this code to LabVIEW 8.20. After the upgrade, it appears that the executable behaves as expected; the border appears around the zoom tools just as in the VI. If you are able to post your VI, I can attempt to build this as a LabVIEW 8.20 executable. We can then determine if this behavior was fixed in LabVIEW 8.20.

I am still interested to determine how your executable had originally displayed correctly. Knowing this information will help us to find a workaround for the behavior you are seeing with LabVIEW 8.0. If you rebuild your executable, does the border again show up correctly? If you were to create a simple VI that performs a basic write to an intensity graph, does this show the same behavior in executable form? Specifically, does the executable display correctly until the color settings are changed?

As I mentioned, I was not able to find any documentation of this strange behavior. At this point, I intend to follow up with R&D to be sure that this effect was identified and explicitly corrected in LabVIEW 8.20. Please post back if I can help you further to determine a workaround or if you have any further concerns. Thanks a lot for your time.

Mike D.
National Instruments
Applications Engineer

[Steve_G]

Mike,

Thanks for the quick reply.  Sorry its taken so long to respond but I was out of town for the holiday.

Here's what I've just done:

1. I ran my application again (on my laptop) and the zoom tools still don't show a border.
2. I rebuilt the application and ran it.  The zoom tools still don't show a border.
3. I ran the source vi again and the zoom tools do show a border.

I'm attaching a zip file to this post.  It contains 8 files:

1. Delete_Intensity_Graph.vi:  This is a simple vi that shows an intensity graph.
2. Delete_Intensity_Graph_Project.aliases and .lvproj:  This is the project that I used to build the application.
3. IntensityGraph.exe, .aliases, and .ini:  This is the built application.
4. Application.JPG:  This is a screen capture of the built application, and it shows that there is no border around the zoom tools.
5. SourceVI.JPG:  This is a screen capture of the source vi, and it shows the border.

My Desktop properties are as follows:

1. Theme: Windows Classic (Modified)
2. Windows and buttons: Windows Classic style
3. Color scheme: Windows Classic
4. Font size: Normal
5. Screen resolution: 1280x800 (which is the max. for my laptop)
6. Color quality: Highest (32 bit)

I'm still puzzled as to why my laptop showed the border in the built application up until I changed my color quality to 16 bit, and now that its back to 32 bit there is no border.

Thanks for any feedback you have.

Steve

[DuffmanSays]

Steve,

When taking a look at your files, I can see that the border does not show up when running the executable but it does show up when running the VI. However, as I mentioned previously, there is no combination of settings that I can find to show the border when the code runs as an executable. Even when creating a new VI into an executable, this does not appear correctly on any of the test machines I have examined.

If your laptop did correctly display this border at one time, then we should be able to see this border again after starting from a new VI. If you create a new VI that contains an intensity graph and build this into an executable, does the border show up correctly?

As far as I can tell this is a bug in the intensity graph when it is a part of an executable built in LabVIEW 8.0. I have built your code into an executable in LabVIEW 8.2, and this border does show up correctly. I have attached both executables (in a zip file) so that you can compare their functionality on your machine. You will need the LabVIEW 8.2 Run-Time Engine to run the executable unless LabVIEW 8.2 is installed. Does this executable correctly show the border on your machine (as expected)?

It appears to me that this bug was corrected in LabVIEW 8.2. However, I was not able to locate explicit documentation of this bug being identified. As I mentioned, I will follow up with R&D to be sure that this behavior was known in LabVIEW 8.0 and intentionally corrected for current releases. I apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused. Please post back if I can provide any further assistance. Thanks,

Mike D.
National Instruments
Applications Engineer