What can affect the size of a front panel object between versions of Windows?

[alsoACS]

Greetings, all!

I have a client that wants to use a piece of LabVIEW code on Windows XP, Vista, and 7.  The application was originally written to run on XP machines, so everything looks OK there.  However, on Vista or 7, certain front panel objects appear larger than they do on the XP machine (in one example, all of the string fields in an array of strings are taller).  Other objects (such as a text label) appear smaller.

The machines in question all appear to have comparable DPI settings, and monitor resolution does not seem to be a factor.  The application uses Application Font in various sizes in the cases of interest.  Can anyone suggest some other things we can check?

Thanks!

[RavensFan]

This issue is coming up more and more lately.  Particularly as people move to Win7 machines.  I've seen differences between my home Vista machine and my work XP machine.

It comes down to the system fonts used by the different OS's.  XP's basic font is Tahoma.  Vista uses Segoe.  I believe Win7 is the same as Vista, but I'm not sure.  The fonts appear similar, but one font or the other is slightly larger.  So any features that are based on a font size will change.  This includes the sizing of labels.  Text within local, shared, global variables, and references.  Enough that it can cause wires to move a few pixels on a BD, and objects that are aligned on one system to look slightly misaligned on another.

I think that if you set the fonts you use to a specific font, rather than Application font (which is taken from one of the current Windows font settings, you will avoid the issue.  The other possibility is to define which font is used for the application font within your LabVIEW.ini.  (Or the application's .ini file if it is built into an .exe.)

Do some searching on the forums for application font, system font, dialog font, windows versions.  You'll find quite a few threads where people had different variations of this problem.