How to Use a Custom TrueType Font With an Embedded UI

Updated May 21, 2021

Environment

The font of the Front Panel in Embedded UI doesn't display correctly in Embedded UI.

I want to use a custom TrueType font with the Embedded UI, so I have installed the same TrueType font under Windows and the Linux Real-Time devices. The font on the device is shown in the X11/XFCE GUI and by the command-line tool fc-list.
I have tried to activate the font for the String Indicator both directly from the LabVIEW Editor and using the Property Text|Font|Font Name, but it doesn't work.

To use the custom fonts in Embedded UI, you could refer to the steps below.

Installing or transferring the fonts which you want to use to the NI Linux Real-Time device. You could find detailed information about the tools for transferring in the related links section.
- We created a folder named TrueType under this path - /usr/share/fonts in this article, and the fonts are transferred to this folder.
Accessing the Shell on NI Linux Real-Time Devices.
Change the working path to the folder created previously.
Using mkfontscale and mkfontdir to create an index of scalable font files and an index of X font files. Make sure that the files of font.dir and font.scale are created under the folder.

Create a file named 10-fonts.conf with the content below. Where <the folder of fonts> is the folder created previously, /usr/share/fonts/TrueType will be used in this example.

Section "Files"
    FontPath   "<the folder of fonts>"
EndSection

Transfer the file (10-fonts.conf) to the device under this path - /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d.
Reboot the device.

After the device rebooted, run the vi again and the font will display correctly in Embedded UI.
CleanShot 2021-05-21 at 14.42.49@2x.png

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