Font problems on Linux

[gdargaud]

Hello all,

I have quite a few LabWindows executable running on various Linux (CentOS) systems. I've had user complain that the user interfaces are 'ugly', and after checking, they were right !

It's one thing to not have the right fonts installed, but I've noticed 2 problems:

- the 2 fonts that normally install with the runtime as /usr/local/natinst/cvirte/fonts/nisystem.ttf and ni7seg.ttf seem to be ignored by the system. fc-list doesn't list them, and using FontSelectPopup() will list 'NIDialog -(not found)'. This can be worked around by looping on all UIR controls and changing to existing fonts, but it's tedious and must be done at runtime with positioning consequences.

- on some machines (CentOS 7) it's impossible to display text in bold or italic, for any font. The text displays as a random (smaller) size instead. This is really frustrating and uglyfying as I have no idea where the problem comes from. Is this a Motif bug ? Older CentOS versions did not have this problem, although I haven't done an exhaustive recession test yet.

[BdogTheWatchdog]

Hi gdargaud,

Are you experiencing this behavior on any other Linux OS's? CentOS isn't supported for LabWindows/CVI so we can't guarantee functionality for it. 

BDog

[gdargaud]

Hi BDog,

I don't know why I wrote CentOS because we actually use Scientific Linux, which IS supported as per you list. Although 7 is not on your list... I've just written a test program which I intend to test on several systems tomorrow, will report on that.

[SaileshK]

Hi gdargaud,

If you do have test programs that were built for a supported OS, please feel free to attach those to this thread so other users can take a look at them as well!

[gdargaud]

Yes, I've had a detailed test program for a few days, but I still can't reproduce some of the behavior I observe in my production code. It's annoying !

[gdargaud]

OK, here's a test program, but actually all you need to test it is a bold text on a panel and that's it. Compile it with "cvicc TestFonts.prj"

Here are also 3 screenshots of the results:

- one under Windows

- one through a remote X connection (ssh) where the bold/italic works, but it's ugly (because none of the fonts match ?)

- one running directly on a Linux desktop where the bold/italic DOES NOT show and the NI fonts show as (not found).

This is running on the SAME computer, so the fonts should be the same, no ? Note that I have ms core fonts installed on this machine, but none show in the font dialog in either mode. Also if I call fc-list it doesn't list the NI fonts (7seg, etc), yet I can see them in /usr/local/natinst/cvirte/fonts/