Support Unicode

[JackDunaway]

Support unicode officially for all FP indicators and controls! Captions and string indicators can be "coaxed" into showing Unicode characters (among other controls/indicators), but trees and listboxes (among most others) cannot show Unicode.

Of course, this may have a small audience, but anyone who has developed a UI meant to be distributed to half a dozen language-speakers has probably fought the same Unicode battles and figured out the display "hacks" that we have.

[tst]

I would also throw proper support for right-to-left languages in there. NI has hundreds of millions of LabVIEW users (OK, potential users. Get NI sales on that) who will want this.

[Intaris]

Yes, but allow us to choose Unicode or not.

Like a new Text display mode or something.....

Shane.

[muks]

I agree with intaris..

[JackDunaway]

Some chatter, beginning here, on my reasoning behind wanting official Unicode support. There I outline a few "battles" and "hacks" quoted from this original post.

[andre2]

I do not understand why Labview is not fully compatible with Unicode yet, as Unicode is a worldwide standard which is supported by all major operating systems since 10 years ! 

[JackDunaway]

Currently, LabVIEW uses the UTF-16 (MBCS) encoding scheme. Once Unicode is adopted into LabVIEW's core, it might make more sense to instead adopt the more ubiquitous UTF-8 encoding. Just something to keep in consideration. Comments welcome (especially from R&D).

[shb]

UTF-8 to text and vice versa are at least built-in functions (see here).

But I would really like full unicode support. Please kudo this idea for me!

[JackDunaway]

I might add: it probably makes sense to swap the officially supported encoding from UTF-16 to UTF-8. This follows suit as the most popular Unicode encoding, and allows ASCII-lovers to remain blissfully oblivious without even needing a "Unicode?" flag.

This may be a pain point for upgrading existing apps that used UTF-16, but since Unicode was never "officially" supported I think it's safe to say those apps must endure NI-supplied mutation code at best or rework at worst. It just doesn't make sense to continue with UTF-16 simply based on legacy support.

[தமிழ்நேரம்]

Hi All,

              Please find the set of VIs that do the Unicode encodings and decodings in the following thread.

"http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-10153"

Enable the Unicode display in LabVIEW as mentioned in the thead and See the example VIs.

Read Write ASCII-Unicode Text File.vi Makes Use of these encoding and decoding VIs.  This VI works similar to the Notepad Application (select Encoding as UTF16LE) to read and display the contents of the file in String Indicator.

Regards

Anish T.

[தமிழ்நேரம்]

Hi All,

              Please find the set of VIs that do the Unicode encodings and decodings in the following thread.

"http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-10153"

Enable the Unicode display in LabVIEW as mentioned in the thead and See the example VIs.

Read Write ASCII-Unicode Text File.vi Makes Use of these encoding and decoding VIs.  This VI works similar to the Notepad Application (select Encoding as UTF16LE) to read and display the contents of the file in String Indicator.

Regards

Anish T.

[TrevMrgn]

The ability to display UTF-8 strings, labels & comments makes a lot of sense.

All exisiting ASCII functions will work without modification, unlike UTF-16.