Mac OS X LV Application Builder gives yellow icons

[emcware]

Hello,

When I build an application with LabVIEW for Mac OS X (2016 through 2020), the icon is yellow and when I save a plot of data, the png is yellow as well.  Running the source code is fine, the icons are normal (black text, white background) and my png plots of data are normal.   Does anyone else see this behavior with the LabVIEW Application builder for Mac OS X?   My only option is to continue to use LabVIEW 2015.

Main.vi Some Plot.vi try_LV_2020_Save_Plot.aliases try_LV_2020_Save_Plot.lvlps try_LV_2020_Save_Plot.lvproj

[emcware]

After living with this for 5 years, I have finally figured out the solution for the yellow plots. The root-cause of the yellow plots appears to be that the standard 256 color palette contained in a cluster coming out of an invoke node (FP.Get Image) become corrupted by the application builder on Mac OS X.   The colors when running source code vs. when build into an application are very different.  My workaround is to bundle the 256 colors directly in the source code.    Of course,  I am using 8-bit color.  I would assume that if a higher bit-depth is needed, then a different set of reference colors would need to be bundled but I have not investigated that.  

I also suspect the yellow icons are similarly corrupted but I don't know how or if I could solve that.  But at least now I can save my plots using LabVIEW 2020.  I hope this helps someone else that has been frustrated with this.  A screenshot of the work-around is below.  I also have attached a screenshot showing the yellow icon.

 

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

On 8/10/2020 at 1:00 AM, emcware said:

After living with this for 5 years, I have finally figured out the solution for the yellow plots. The root-cause of the yellow plots appears to be that the standard 256 color palette contained in a cluster coming out of an invoke node (FP.Get Image) become corrupted by the application builder on Mac OS X.   The colors when running source code vs. when build into an application are very different.  My workaround is to bundle the 256 colors directly in the source code.    Of course,  I am using 8-bit color.  I would assume that if a higher bit-depth is needed, then a different set of reference colors would need to be bundled but I have not investigated that.  

I also suspect the yellow icons are similarly corrupted but I don't know how or if I could solve that.  But at least now I can save my plots using LabVIEW 2020.  I hope this helps someone else that has been frustrated with this.  A screenshot of the work-around is below.  I also have attached a screenshot showing the yellow icon.

The application builder uses internally basically a similar method to retrieve the icons as an image data cluster to then save to the exe file resources. So whatever corruption happens in the build executable is likely the root cause for both the yellow graph image and the yellow icon. And it's likely dependent on something like the graphics card or its driver too or something similar as otherwise it would have been long ago found and fixed (if it happened on all machines).

Edited August 17, 2020 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[emcware]

Hi Rolf,

Thank you for responding.  I was starting to think I am the only person that builds LabVIEW applications with a Mac.  I don't think the root cause is a driver or graphics card because it happens on every Mac I have when I use LabVIEW 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.  The problem with the yellow icons and the yellow graph don't happen with LabVIEW 2015 or earlier.   The root cause seems to be the invoke node that takes a reference of a vi and gets it's image data.   The 256 bit color palette array in the cluster bundle is being corrupted by the application builder.   So (you can see in the source code) I bundled my own 256 color palette array and it solved the problem so that the plot is no longer yellow when I build an application.

[Doug Harper]

Thanks so much for posting this fix.  I have been struggling to eliminate this yellow graph issue on the Mac version of an application we use in our undergraduate physics laboratory for graphing and fitting experimental data (http://physics.wku.edu/up/software/physics-data-assistant/).  It is good to have those yellow graphs gone !