Broken fonts in History when opened in a Chinese Windows system

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Sat, 08/12/2017 - 07:51 am

I am using Mac and IgorPro 6.37. My colleagues are using Windows (Chinese version) and also IgorPro 6.37. When any of them opens an IgorPro file generated by my Mac, he will see broken fonts in the beginning of each line in History. Can this problem be solved?

Screeh shot of broken fonts: http://i.imgur.com/4MqD0TW.png
The problem occurs because the windows code for the bullet character, 0x95, is a valid first byte of a two-byte Chinese character. So, for example, if the history contains:
•ModifyGraph
when displayed using a Chinese font, the system treats •M as a two-byte Chinese character.

Since, in this example, there is no need to display Chinese characters, you can fix the problem by changing the font for the history area to a Western font instead of a Chinese font. To do this, select some text in the history area and choose Misc->History Area->Set Text Format. Choose a Western font, such as Arial, and click OK.

If you want to use a Arial in new experiments, choose Misc->History Area->Capture Prefs, click the Text Format checkbox, and click Capture Prefs.

Another workaround, if you do want to use Chinese characters in the history area, is to replace the bullet with asterisk in the history area. Do this on Macintosh by selecting the first character at the top of the history area, choosing Edit->Replace and doing a Replace All to replace • with *.

This is not a problem in Igor7 because Igor7 uses Unicode which is the same on Macintosh and Windows.

August 12, 2017 at 08:42 pm - Permalink