Customising the Omniscope Application Font

Changing the default application font

By default, Omniscope uses Tahoma as the application-wide font face, unless customised. It is possible to change this font face throughout the Omniscope interface - both for interface elements such as menus, dialogs and buttons, and for data elements such as bar view labels. You may wish to do this to comply with your organisation's corporate font standards, or to enable Omniscope to support a different character set for a different language, in particular, non-Western languages.

The default Tahoma does not support some non-western languages such as Chinese and Japanese. Omniscope will automatically switch to another font such as Arial Unicode MS if the Omniscope Settings > Language is set to a language requiring such characters. For more information on changing fonts to fully support certain non-Western languages, see Using Omniscope with Non-Western Languages. 

Customising your own application (and file-specific) font(s) using the Settings menu

You can use Omniscope itself to customise your own default font setting using the Settings menu. Use the Settings > Application font menu to choose the default font face for your own Omniscope installation. This application font will then be used regardless of which IOK file you have open, unless you have also further customised a file-specific font override using Settings > File font to choose a file-specific font to use in that file only.

Note that if you make the change this way, it willl only apply to your own installation, and cannot be shared with others because the changes will not be exported as part of your own shareable version of the branding folder (see below).

Customising your own application font manually

If your own branding folder is to be exported and shared or bundled for wider deployment, you must change your font settings by manually editing your own copies of the configuration properties files which will be exported with your own sharable branding folder. 

Windows PCs 

(If you are using Vista/Windows 7 or later, you should create and edit the file in a different location such as your desktop, then move the file into the installation folder afterwards)

1. Using text editor like Notepad, create a new file with just one line of text as follows:
   AppFontName=[the name of your font]
   Example for non-western languages:
   AppFontName=Arial Unicode MS
2. Save the file to your desktop, calling it "config.properties" (with no ".txt" extension).
3. Explore to the folder "C:\Program Files\Visokio Omniscope"
4. If it does not already exist, create a new subfolder called "branding"
5. Move your newly created "config.properties" file into this subfolder.
6. Restart Omniscope.  

1. Using TextEdit, create a new file with just one line of text as follows:
   AppFontName=[the name of your font]
   Example for non-western languages:
   AppFontName=Arial Unicode MS
2. From the Format menu, choose "Make plain text".
3. Save the file as plain text to your desktop, calling it "config.properties" (with no ".txt" extension).  You may have to rename it after saving.
4. Using Finder, browse to your Applications folder.
5. Locate Omniscope, right-click and choose "Show package contents"
6. Browse to Contents > Resources > Java
7. Create a new subfolder called "branding"
8. Move your newly created "config.properties" file into this subfolder.
9. Restart Omniscope.  

Deploying your custom font settings to other Omniscopes

Once you have edited your own 'model' installation files, you can create a distributable branding folder in Omniscope .ILF format that, when clicked by users with Omniscpe already installed, will update those existing installations such that your changes to fonts are automatically installed on all recipients' machines.

Settings > {Application-wide} Advanced > Tools  > Create distributable branding pack 

Note that if your recipients do not already have Omniscope installed, either they must install it first before they can click on .ILF files, or you have to create a bundled installer that includes your .ILF branding pack. For more information, see Bundling Installers

Restricting font choice to corporate fonts  

This allows you to create a folder of only certain fonts which will limit the fonts available from the Omniscope font menus. You would use this to ensure all your IOK files have a standard set of fonts, preventing your users from creating IOK files departing from your corporate style guidelines.

These instructions are for a Windows PC:

• Create a folder such as C:\our_fonts somewhere on the PC
• Explore to C:\Windows\Fonts
• Copy (not move) all the fonts you want to make available from Omniscope into the folder you have created. Note that onlyTrue Type Fonts (with .TTF extension) files can be included.
• Edit the installconfig.properties file in the Omniscope program folder using NotePad:
• Uncomment (by removing the space & hash) at the front of the  #ADDITIONAL_JVM_ARGS line
• Add/change to include -DinstalledFontLocation=c:\our_fonts
• Example:  ADDITIONAL_JVM_ARGS=-DinstalledFontLocation=c:\our_fonts 
• For more information see additional JVM arguments.