Fixing a SmartSDR display issue on Windows 10

John - AF3K

Hello to all from a Flex-6500 newbie. Recently traded up from the Flex-5k and really enjoying it. This is my first post. Thought it might be useful to share the fix to a font display problem I ran into after installing SmartSDR on a new Lenovo T440s ThinkPad running Windows 10 (v5011 update installed) on an Intel i7 processor. The performance of the SmartSDR UI and Flex-6500 radio is great, but as you can see in the video below the frequency displayed in the slice receiver was partially blocked by the top part of the UI. No matter what screen size or resolution was selected the slice frequency would always be partially blocked. Dudley at Flex was super helpful and came up with the solution. The initial thought was the problem was a scaling issue with the Intel 4400 graphics driver. We tried all kinds of things, including re-installing everything, but ultimately noticed that the font used to display the frequency was actually different than what SmartSDR normally uses. Checking the font manager in Windows 10 it was clear that the "Napoli Serial Xlight Regular" font used by SmartSDR was not present. Once diagnosed, the fix was simple - Dudley e-mailed the font in a small 50kb file called s-napoa.ttf and I installed it by dragging the file into the Windows 10 font manager window. Problem solved!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzabeH7r9WI

Jim Gilliam

Unfortunately there aren't enough "Dudleys" to go around!

Bill W2PKY

Since this has not been reported before do you think the missing font is due to the Lenovo T440s ThinkPad Win 10 distribution files?

Martin AA6E

Hey, I "like" this post -- clearly written, useful video, and a good resolution.  But I am frustrated - FRS doesn't allow me to "like" a problem report.  I can only say "me too".  Well, I can't say "me too", because I'm not running W10 and haven't run into the problem.  I need a "go figure" button.

@John - Welcome to the fray.  And happy new year to all!

Cal Spreitzer - N3CAL

Great post!  I'm running W10 here and just checked my installed fonts for Napoli Serial Xlight Regular.  It's  installed on my machine.  (was upgrade from W7). 

Happy New Year! 

Cal/N3CAL

Burt Fisher

Most hams don't narrate, we are expected to just know. You did an excellent job.

John - AF3K

Dudley did mention that one other person recently ran into the same 'missing font' issue, but I'm not sure what brand of PC was being used. My machine came from Lenovo with Windows 7 installed along with a free version of 8.1 if I wanted to upgrade to that. - which I never did. Microsoft bugged me so much to upgrade to Windows 10 that I finally gave in. That was several months before I purchased the 6500 so I have no way of knowing if the font was present in the Lenovo Windows 7 install.

John - AF3K

Thanks Martin and Cal for the nice welcome. Happy New Year!

John - AF3K

Thanks for the encouragement Burt! Happy New Year.

John - AF3K

Seems a good guess that the Win 10 distribution (auto downloaded to the machine) is to blame. But not sure if it was the install logic, or if the font was just omitted for some reason.

Martin AA6E

I checked on my Toshiba laptop, which serves as my Win10 test victim, and which I upgraded from Win7.  It runs SSDR with no issues, at least in casual testing.  Darned hard to tune using a touchpad, though!