WFP separates message generation from message presentation. Generation decides which messages exist, which are visible, and which overflow the available capacity. Message display settings decide how those messages are presented in editors, inspection overlays, schedules, and exports.

Changing message display settings does not change routes, destination grouping, sign capacity, or which messages the planner selects.

Open Project → Message display... to configure presentation for the whole project.

Use Font order to enable and arrange fallback fonts for Destination Dictionary text. Latin extended, Greek, and Cyrillic characters are always available. Add and order the Arabic and CJK fonts required by the project.

Project locale is required and is already preselected when a new project is created. WFP chooses the closest supported locale from the platform's language preferences.

The supported project locales are:

The selected locale is stored in the project and affects message collation only. It does not translate messages or change measurement units, routing, direction values, or fonts. Legacy, missing, or unsupported stored values are repaired to en-GB.

Message comparison is natural, case-insensitive, and accent-sensitive. For example, Gate 2 appears before Gate 10.

Arrange all four automatic sorting criteria in the required priority order.

Weight, Message, and Distance can be ascending or descending. Direction always follows the direction sequence configured below the sorting rules.

Messages that have a Direction or Distance value appear before messages without that value under both ascending and descending sorting. A missing distance is not treated as zero.

Arrange semantic directions in their intended presentation order and choose the graphical icon used for each direction. The sequence controls the Direction sorting criterion.

Direction icons affect presentation only. They do not change routing or the textual Direction values written to CSV and TSV. None and Fingerpost direction markers remain system-presented and are not part of the configurable semantic-direction icon list.

Changes take effect only when you click Apply. Closing the dialog discards unapplied changes.

Reset to default restores Font order, the default four-rule Message sort order, and the default direction order and icons. It does not reset Project locale or manual ordering already applied to sign faces.

To clear manual ordering throughout the project, select Reset manual ordering on all sign faces, then click Apply. This project-wide reset is part of the same undoable change as any display settings applied with it.

Automatic order is configured for the project and is available for every sign face.

The effective Weight used for presentation comes from the message's available source:

Manual order is an optional presentation sequence for visible messages on one sign face. It does not change message weight, route choice, group collapse, capacity, or the automatic visible/overflow result.

Editors and inspection overlays present each face by two sections:

Hidden messages cannot be manually reordered. Message Schedule views and all message exports exclude hidden messages.

A valid manual order remains authoritative for visible messages that WFP still recognizes, even when their weight, direction, text, or distance changes. New or newly shown messages are inserted according to the automatic order while preserving the relative sequence of the remaining manually ordered messages.

WFP attempts to preserve meaningful manual ordering during normal message regeneration, sign-type changes, Undo/Redo, and level cloning. If WFP cannot safely reconcile an order, follow the diagnostic shown in the editor. If necessary, reset the order for the affected face or sign, then reorder the messages manually.

Use a Sign Message Editor in a pinned Sign Inspector or in the docked editor tab.

As an accessible alternative, right-click one visible row and choose Move Up or Move Down.

Messages cannot be dragged across face separators, and hidden messages cannot be moved. One completed drag or Move Up/Down action creates one Undo entry. A marker on the ordering handle shows when a row's position comes from an applied manual face order.

Message visibility starts with the state produced by generation and capacity planning. You can override that state without regenerating messages.

To change one message, right-click its row and choose Toggle visibility. Choose Reset visibility override to return it to its automatic state.

For several selected rows, right-click the selection and choose Set selection visible, Set selection hidden, or Reset visibility override.

Hiding a manually ordered message removes it from that face's manual sequence. Showing it again reinserts it according to automatic order while preserving the remaining manual sequence.

Hidden and overflow messages remain available in Message Editors and sign or target inspection overlays. They do not appear in Message Schedules or exports unless made visible.

Choose the narrowest reset that matches the intended change:

After reset, the affected messages use project-wide automatic order. Other face orders remain unchanged unless they were included in the selected scope.

Message Schedule CSV, report-ZIP Message Schedule CSV, Message Editor CSV, and Message Editor TSV all use the same visible-message order and fixed schema:

Order is 1-based and contiguous after hidden messages are excluded. It restarts for each sign face.

The export scope depends on where the export starts:

The export schema is independent of the columns displayed in the Message Editor. The editor's sort-priority badges are read-only indicators; the editor has no ad-hoc header sorting. The editor-only Weight column is not exported.

When a project created in WFP 1.3 or earlier is opened in WFP 1.4, all signs initially use automatic ordering, and manual reordering is temporarily disabled.

To enable manual reordering, regenerate the automatic messages. You can do this for the entire project (recommended) or for a specific sign.

To regenerate messages for the entire project, select Main Menu → Messages → Re-generate. If Re-generate is greyed out, untick Keep updating on the go, located directly below it. You can re-enable on-the-go message generation after the manual regeneration is complete.

To regenerate messages for a specific sign, either select Regenerate messages from the sign’s context menu or open the relevant Sign Message Editor and select More actions → Regenerate messages.