Many non-English languages make use of alternative characters or even use an entirely different alphabet. Historically for computers this was difficult because ASCII, the native text of computers, only had enough characters to write standard western European languages without any special characters.

 

To resolve this issue, a system known as Unicode was created, including a UTF16 format where a character can be stored as more than one byte. CX-Supervisor has supported this system for a number of years for its internal text and the information which is displayed in the user interface. Since CX-Supervisor v3, It is now possible to store this text on a PLC for PLC manipulation when needed.

 

To do this, enter the CX-Supervisor text string as normal:

 

 

When you click the setup button to define how it is stored on the PLC, you now have an option to set this as a Unicode type:

 

 

The point will now be stored on the PLC as sets of two bytes per character rather than the usual single byte used for standard 'Western European' strings.