print font size

[Neil.Pate]

Help!

I cannot seem to get LabVIEW to print with the fonts in the desired size.

I am using the Print.Panel to printer method, and this has the desired effect of printing the front panel, but the font sizes are not correct. I.e. if I print from a word processor (Arial size 24 font), and compare the print LabVIEW generates (also Arial size 24) the LV generated print is significantly smaller.

The problem is I am using this method to generate barcodes (using a barcode font) and the barcodes the are being printed by LabVIEW are not reliably scannable, whereas barcodes I generate with the same font and using a word processor are much more reliably scanned.

My gut feeling is LV is scaling the front panel when it prints it, but I have switched off the front panel print scaling option with not noticeable effect.

Any ideas???

[DanBrowne]

Is it possible for you to post the code you are working with? I have tried a similar thing, and from my point of view, the font size seems to be consistent with what is on the screen. Where exactly are you changing the print scaling option? Within LabVIEW, or in the printer settings directly?

I have posted my example, which you can try to see if it makes any difference to the behaviour at your end.

Regards,

Dan - NIUK

[Neil.Pate]

Dan,

Thanks for your help in trying to debug this 🙂

I ran your VI, and it basically gives me the same result I am seeing.

Let me explain my scenario.

My size reference is a printout from a word processor (in my case open office, but I dont think that is important).
I printed out (from the word processor) the traditional "The quick brown fox etc",  size 24 Arial, and then took this printout and compared it visually with the Arial font in my operating system font directory. I did this by physically taking the piece of paper and putting it over the LCD monitor so that I could see the computer font through the piece of paper. The word processor printed exactly the same size as the font on the screen, which is what I expect as that it the point of true type fonts.

When I run your VI (or a test VI of my own) the LabVIEW printed font is consistently smaller on the paper than what it should be. Arial 24 font should be the same size if no panel scaling is going on surely?

Have you run your test VI and actually compared it to what 24 pt Arial should print out? If you have and you are getting a size match then something is seriously wrong with my PC/LV installation.

[DanBrowne]

Hi,

Yes, I see the same behaviour - when i hold my Front Panel printout over the same sized (supposedly) text in a Word Processor window at 100% scaling, the Front Panel's text is smaller.

I will have to look into this in more detail for you.

Regards,

Dan

[DanBrowne]

Hi again,

After looking at this in more depth, it looks as if this is a difference in the way fonts are rendered in LabVIEW as compared to in the Windows environment itself. Currently, it doesn't look like there is anything that can be done, other than to use a slightly bigger size to compensate for this.

Apologies for the inconvienience this may cause you, and I shall post to this thread in the future if a solution ever presents itself.

Regards,

Dan

[Neil.Pate]

Dan,

Again, thanks for investigating.

Unfortunately, I have tried a bigger font and it causes all kinds of trouble. The isse here is that I am using a barcode font to produce, when the panel is printed, a barcode readable by a scanner.

However, the barcode font which works fine in all word processors displays quite small in the LV front panel, and so I have to really increase the size to get it sensible. But something must be amiss with the font scaling algorithm in LV as when the barcode is scaled up it can no longer be read by a scanner after it has been printed (i.e. the mark/space ratio must be getting messed up slightly).

The odd thing is if I use LV reports, it prints completely correctly, i.e. the correct size. But it is a huge pain to programatically design a nice looking report with multiple columns / paragraphs etc.
This is what I am going to have to do for now, pity... It would be really nice if LV displayed fonts in the correct proportions!

Thanks anyway