Community Spring Cleaning week is here! Join your fellow Maveryx in digging through your old posts and marking comments on them as solved. Learn more here!

Alteryx Server Knowledge Base

Definitive answers from Server experts.

Prevent creation of font file wqy-microhei.ttc in Alteryx temporary folder

PaulN
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)
Created

Prevent creation of font filewqy-microhei.ttcin Alteryx temporary folder

 

With 2019.3+, one could noticed the creation of files Rtmpxxxxxx\wqy-microhei.ttc in Alteryx temporary folder, each time a workflow that contains a predictive tool or R tool runs. Such files are not removed automatically.

 

 

Example:

 

font_file_example.png

 

Environment

 

  • Product - Alteryx Designer, Alteryx Server with predictive tools
    • 2019.3+

 

Cause

 

Alteryx Predictive tools 2019.3, implemented a new way to handle fonts, to help with some particular problems encountered with some languages (internal reference: DE18722). Fix is based on packages sysfonts and showtext, which uses showtextdb.Font file wqy-microhei.ttc is loaded automatically when package showtextdb is imported and is never released. This leads to the accumulation of unwanted files, which is a defect - TAP-839

 

Solution

Note - The workaround discussed below has to be reapplied for each upgrade.

I. For standard version of the Predictive Tools:

 

1. Uncompress attached file fixed_package.zip in %TEMP%. %TEMP% is a Windows environment variable which will be replaced by a value specific to your system. %TEMP% should now contain a file named showtextdb_2.0.tar.gz

 

 
 
 

temp_showtextdb.png

 

 

2. Stop Alteryx Designer or AlteryxService has not process should access the library between the change

 

3. Open a command prompt

- as Administrator if you have Alteryx Server or an admin version of Alteryx Designer

- standard otherwise

 

4. Go to R folder in Alteryx distribution (replace %ALTERYXDIR% with relevant value, example cd C:\Program Files\Alteryx\R-3.5.3\bin

 

cd %ALTERYXDIR%\R-3.5.3\bin

 

 

5. Rename library folder

 

move ..\library\showtextdb showtexdb.old

 

 

6. Install patched library. In following example replace %ALTERYXDIR% by Alteryx product installation path. Note that character "/" is used as the delimiter (example: --library="C:/Program Files/Alteryx/R-3.5.3/library")

 

r CMD INSTALL --library="%ALTERYXDIR%/R-3.5.3/library" %TEMP%\showtextdb_2.0.tar.gz

 

 

7. Start Designer or AlteryxService

 

 

 

II. If Microsoft R is used with Alteryx Predictive Tools:

 

Following assumes that Microsoft R was installed using default location:C:\Program Files\Microsoft\R Client

 

1. Uncompress attached file fixed_package.zip in %TEMP%. %TEMP% is a Windows environment variable which will be replaced by a value specific to your system. %TEMP% should now contain a file named showtextdb_2.0.tar.gz

 

 
 
 

temp_showtextdb.png

 

 

2. Stop Alteryx Designer or AlteryxServiceto ensure that no process will access the library during the operation

 

3. Open a command prompt as Administrator

 

4. Go to bin folder for Microsoft R

 

cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\R Client\R_SERVER\bin"

 

 

5. Rename library folder

 

move ..\library\showtextdb showtexdb.old

 

 

6. Install patched library

 

r CMD INSTALL --library="C:\Program Files\Microsoft\R Client\R_SERVER\library" %TEMP%\showtextdb_2.0.tar.gz

 

 

7. Start Designer/AlteryxService



Attachments
Comments
Mike2020
5 - Atom

Hi all,

 

this issue is still present in Alteryx Server 2021.4, can the workaround still be used to prevent this behavior?

Thanks in advance

 

BR Mike