Panelview Plus Fonts

[shoelesscraig]

I have a PV Plus that has an application on it that uses Arial font for most of the text. It displays correctly, just like it looks on my PC screen when I'm designing it. I exported one of the "display" screens from that application into another application. On this 2nd application, the text does NOT display correctly. It looks nothing like the text on my PC screen. And, all of this happens when I run these 2 different applications on THE SAME PV Plus terminal. I have checked the "Font Linking" menu, and it says that Arial is linked to "\Windows\arial.tff" regaurdless of which application is loaded on the terminal. I don't get it.

What am I missing?

 

[Ken Roach]

Check the base language for the project, when you first open it up in FactoryTalk View Studio.

If they're not both the same (default is "English (United States), en-US") then the terminal will attempt to use the fonts defined for a different language.

This is a guess: I've seen similar-sounding effects from having different languages set.

 

[shoelesscraig]

Ken, I just checked and yes, the default language is the same (en-US) English for both applications.

 

[Ken Roach]

Bin that theory, then.

Do you get the same effect when you do a Test Runtime on your development PC ?

Arial and the "System" font on the PV+ look similar. I know I had problems where Arial wasn't loaded onto the PV+ so RSViewME defaulted to using System.

Also remember that Arial, Arial Bold, Arial Narrow, and Arial Unicode are all different fonts !

 

[shoelesscraig]

Ken, no. I do NOT get the same result when I run the "Test Application" on my PC. When I do that, everything looks fine. And to be honest, I do not know how to load fonts onto the panelview terminal. I just assumed that Arial was already on the terminal since I can go to "Font Linking" and select Arial and it shows that it is linked to "\Windows\arial.tff". Am I incorrect to assume this? And if so, how to I load the font? From the Factory Talk disc?

Another reason that I assumed it wasn't the terminal is because the first application runs fine on that terminal.

 

[shoelesscraig]

And just so you know, the font is Arial (no bold, narrow, etc.) When I double click my text while creating the screen, it is listed as simply Arial. And in the "Font Linking" menu it is listed as simply Arial as well.

 

[Ken Roach]

You use the same Transfer Utility that you use to move *.MER files to load Font files onto the terminal. The licensed PV+ fonts are supposed to be shipped with the FTView Studio software on DVD.

There are some procedural details in the Transfer Utility help file.

I don't know which fonts are pre-loaded onto the terminals these days. I have found documentation that suggests that MS Sans Serif and Tahoma are the only pre-loaded fonts, and additional documentation that suggests that Arial is as well.

If you are not doing a language-switching application, you do not need to make any "font linking" selections; leave those at default.

 

[shoelesscraig]

Thanks for your time and help Ken. I will look into installing the font. But...does it seem odd to you that the 1st application shows up fine, and the 2nd one does not? I would think that if the font was not installed, both would appear incorrectly...?

 

[Ken Roach]

It's not the weirdest thing I'll see this week, but it's in the top twenty.

If I were in your shoes (no pun intended) I'd have a fresh set of eyes take a look at the projects. I'm pretty busy but there are other FTView users around.

 

[shoelesscraig]

Ok, so heres what I found out. When I click on text that I have created, and the editing box appears, it shows "Arial" as the font. However, if I were to select a different font, the click apply, then come back and select Arial again and click apply, the font will look different on my PC than it did before...even though it said it was Arial before and after I was done. Its like it is calling it Arial, but it is really something else? I tried looking at the other fonts, but nothing seems to look the same...I'm at a loss. Any ideas?

 

[shoelesscraig]

After playing with it some more, I'll retract that last statement. Turns out, Bold was on when I went back to Arial...but the "B" was NOT showing that it was selected...Crazy Factory Talk...

Still not sure whats going on though...