Multinational Character Set

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Multinational Character Set (MCS)
MIME / IANADEC-MCS
Alias(es)IBM1100, CP1100, WE8DEC, csDECMCS, dec
Language(s) English, various others
Extends US-ASCII
Succeeded by ISO 8859-1, LICS, BraSCII, Cork encoding

The Multinational Character Set (DMCS or MCS) is a character encoding created in 1983 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for use in the popular VT220 terminal. It was an 8-bit extension of ASCII that added accented characters, currency symbols, and other character glyphs missing from 7-bit ASCII. It is only one of the code pages implemented for the VT220 National Replacement Character Set (NRCS). [1] [2] MCS is registered as IBM code page/CCSID 1100 (Multinational Emulation) since 1992. [3] [4] Depending on associated sorting Oracle calls it WE8DEC, N8DEC, DK8DEC, S8DEC, or SF8DEC. [5] [6]

Contents

Such "extended ASCII" sets were common (the National Replacement Character Set provided sets for more than a dozen European languages), but MCS has the distinction of being the ancestor of ECMA-94 in 1985 [7] and ISO 8859-1 in 1987. [8]

The code chart of MCS with ECMA-94, ISO 8859-1 and the first 256 code points of Unicode have many more similarities than differences. In addition to unused code points, differences from ISO 8859-1 are:

MCS code pointUnicode mappingCharacter
0xA8U+00A4 ¤
0xD7U+0152 Œ
0xDDU+0178 Ÿ
0xF7U+0153 œ
0xFDU+00FF ÿ

Character set

DEC Multinational Character Set [3] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]
0123456789ABCDEF
0_ NUL SOH STX ETX EOT ENQ ACK BEL   BS    HT    LF    VT    FF    CR    SO    SI   
1_ DLE DC1 DC2 DC3 DC4 NAK SYN ETB CAN   EM   SUB ESC   FS    GS    RS    US  
2_  SP   ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
3_ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
4_ @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
5_ P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
6_ ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
7_ p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~ DEL
8_ IND NEL SSA ESA HTS HTJ VTS PLD PLU   RI    SS2 SS3
9_ DCS PU1 PU2 STS CCH MW SPA EPA CSI   ST   OSC   PM   APC
A_ ¡ ¢ £ ¥ § ¤
00A4		 © ª «
B_ ° ± ² ³ µ · ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¿
C_ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï
D_ Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö Œ
0152		 Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ÿ
0178		 ß
E_ à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï
F_ ñ ò ó ô õ ö œ
0153		 ø ù ú û ü ÿ
00FF
  Differences from ISO-8859-1

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ISO/IEC 8859-1</span> Character encoding

ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, Information technology—8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets—Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1, is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1987. ISO/IEC 8859-1 encodes what it refers to as "Latin alphabet no. 1", consisting of 191 characters from the Latin script. This character-encoding scheme is used throughout the Americas, Western Europe, Oceania, and much of Africa. It is the basis for some popular 8-bit character sets and the first two blocks of characters in Unicode.

ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint ISO and IEC series of standards for 8-bit character encodings. The series of standards consists of numbered parts, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1, ISO/IEC 8859-2, etc. There are 15 parts, excluding the abandoned ISO/IEC 8859-12. The ISO working group maintaining this series of standards has been disbanded.

ISO/IEC 8859-15:1999, Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 15: Latin alphabet No. 9, is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1999. It is informally referred to as Latin-9. It is similar to ISO 8859-1, and thus also intended for “Western European” languages, but replaces some less common symbols with the euro sign and some letters that were deemed necessary.

ISO/IEC 8859-3:1999, Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 3: Latin alphabet No. 3, is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1988. It is informally referred to as Latin-3 or South European. It was designed to cover Turkish, Maltese and Esperanto, though the introduction of ISO/IEC 8859-9 superseded it for Turkish. The encoding was popular for users of Esperanto, but fell out of use as application support for Unicode became more common.

ISO/IEC 646 is a set of ISO/IEC standards, described as Information technology — ISO 7-bit coded character set for information interchange and developed in cooperation with ASCII at least since 1964. Since its first edition in 1967 it has specified a 7-bit character code from which several national standards are derived.

ISO/IEC 8859-8, Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 8: Latin/Hebrew alphabet, is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings. ISO/IEC 8859-8:1999 from 1999 represents its second and current revision, preceded by the first edition ISO/IEC 8859-8:1988 in 1988. It is informally referred to as Latin/Hebrew. ISO/IEC 8859-8 covers all the Hebrew letters, but no Hebrew vowel signs. IBM assigned code page 916 to it. This character set was also adopted by Israeli Standard SI1311:2002, with some extensions.

The C0 and C1 control code or control character sets define control codes for use in text by computer systems that use ASCII and derivatives of ASCII. The codes represent additional information about the text, such as the position of a cursor, an instruction to start a new line, or a message that the text has been received.

The National Replacement Character Set (NRCS) was a feature supported by later models of Digital's (DEC) computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983. NRCS allowed individual characters from one character set to be replaced by one from another set, allowing the construction of different character sets on the fly. It was used to customize the character set to different local languages, without having to change the terminal's ROM for different countries, or alternately, include many different sets in a larger ROM. Many 3rd party terminals and terminal emulators supporting VT200 codes also supported NRCS.

The Lotus International Character Set (LICS) is a proprietary single-byte character encoding introduced in 1985 by Lotus Development Corporation. It is based on the 1983 DEC Multinational Character Set (MCS) for VT220 terminals. As such, LICS is also similar to two other descendants of MCS, the ECMA-94 character set of 1985 and the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set of 1987.

Code page 1101, also known as CP1101, is an IBM code page number assigned to the UK variant of DEC's National Replacement Character Set (NRCS). The 7-bit character set was introduced for DEC's computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983, but is also used by IBM for their DEC emulation. Similar but not identical to the series of ISO 646 character sets, the character set is a close derivation from ASCII with only code point 0x23 differing.

Code page 1107, also known as CP1107, is an IBM code page number assigned to the alternate Denmark/Norway variant of DEC's National Replacement Character Set (NRCS). The 7-bit character set was introduced for DEC's computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983, but is also used by IBM for their DEC emulation. Similar but not identical to the series of ISO 646 character sets, the character set is a close derivation from ASCII with only six code points differing.

Code page 1103, also known as CP1103, or SF7DEC, is an IBM code page number assigned to the Finnish variant of DEC's National Replacement Character Set (NRCS). The 7-bit character set was introduced for DEC's computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983, but is also used by IBM for their DEC emulation. Similar but not identical to the series of ISO 646 character sets, the character set is a close derivation from ASCII with only nine code points differing.

Code page 1106, also known as CP1106 or S7DEC, is an IBM code page number assigned to the Swedish variant of DEC's National Replacement Character Set (NRCS). The 7-bit character set was introduced for DEC's computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983, but is also used by IBM for their DEC emulation. Similar but not identical to the series of ISO 646 character sets, the character set is a close derivation from ASCII with only ten code points differing.

Code page 1104, also known as CP1104, F7DEC, ISO-IR-025 or NF Z 62-010 (1973) is an IBM code page number assigned to the French variant of DEC's National Replacement Character Set (NRCS). The 7-bit character set was introduced for DEC's computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983, but it is also used by IBM for their DEC emulation.

Code page 1020, also known as CP1020, is an IBM code page number assigned to the French-Canadian variant of DEC's National Replacement Character Set (NRCS). The 7-bit character set was introduced for DEC's computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983, but is also used by IBM for their DEC emulation. Similar but not identical to the series of ISO 646 character sets, the character set is a close derivation from ASCII with only ten code points differing.

Code page 1021, also known as CP1021 or CH7DEC, is an IBM code page number assigned to the Swiss variant of DEC's National Replacement Character Set (NRCS). The 7-bit character set was introduced for DEC's computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983, but is also used by IBM for their DEC emulation. Similar but not identical to the series of ISO 646 character sets, the character set is a close derivation from ASCII with only twelve code points differing.

Code page 1023, also known as CP1023 or E7DEC, is an IBM code page number assigned to the Spanish variant of DEC's National Replacement Character Set (NRCS). The 7-bit character set was introduced for DEC's computer terminal systems, starting with the VT200 series in 1983, but is also used by IBM for their DEC emulation. Similar but not identical to the series of ISO 646 character sets, the character set is a close derivation from ASCII with only eight code points differing.

Code page 1287, also known as CP1287, DEC Greek (8-bit) and EL8DEC, is one of the code pages implemented for the VT220 terminals. It supports the Greek language.

Code page 1288, also known as CP1288, DEC Turkish (8-bit) and TR8DEC, is one of the code pages implemented for the VT220 terminals. It supports the Turkish language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BraSCII</span>

BraSCII is an encoded repertoire of characters that was used in Brazil. It was used in the 1980s on several printers, in applications like Carta Certa, in video boards and it was the standard character set in the Brazilian line of MSX computers. This code page is known by Star printers as Code page 3847.

References

  1. ↑ "VT220 Programmer Reference Manual" (2 ed.). Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). 1984 [1983].
  2. ↑ "TinyTERM Emulator — National Replacement Character Set (NRCS)". Century Software. Archived from the original on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2016-12-01. [sic]
  3. 1 2 "SBCS code page information - CPGID: 01100 / Name: Multinational Emulation". IBM Software: Globalization: Coded character sets and related resources: Code pages by CPGID: Code page identifiers. 1. IBM. 1992-10-01. Archived from the original on 2016-12-03. Retrieved 2016-12-02.
  4. ↑ "CCSID 1100 information document". Archived from the original on 2014-12-01.
  5. ↑ Baird, Cathy; Chiba, Dan; Chu, Winson; Fan, Jessica; Ho, Claire; Law, Simon; Lee, Geoff; Linsley, Peter; Matsuda, Keni; Oscroft, Tamzin; Takeda, Shige; Tanaka, Linus; Tozawa, Makoto; Trute, Barry; Tsujimoto, Mayumi; Wu, Ying; Yau, Michael; Yu, Tim; Wang, Chao; Wong, Simon; Zhang, Weiran; Zheng, Lei; Zhu, Yan; Moore, Valarie (2002) [1996]. "Appendix A: Locale Data". Oracle9i Database Globalization Support Guide (PDF) (Release 2 (9.2) ed.). Oracle Corporation. Oracle A96529-01. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-02-14. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
  6. ↑ "Oracle characterset descriptions for 9.2". Daylight Chemical Information Systems. 2017. Archived from the original on 2016-06-17. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
  7. ↑ Standard ECMA-94: 8-bit Single-Byte Coded Graphic Character Set (PDF) (1 ed.). European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA). March 1985 [1984-12-14]. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-12-02. Retrieved 2016-12-01. Since 1982 the urgency of the need for an 8-bit single-byte coded character set was recognized in ECMA as well as in ANSI/X3L2 and numerous working papers were exchanged between the two groups. In February 1984 ECMA TC1 submitted to ISO/TC97/SC2 a proposal for such a coded character set. At its meeting of April 1984 SC decided to submit to TC97 a proposal for a new item of work for this topic. Technical discussions during and after this meeting led TC1 to adopt the coding scheme proposed by X3L2. Part 1 of Draft International Standard DTS 8859 is based on this joint ANSI/ECMA proposal.... Adopted as an ECMA Standard by the General Assembly of Dec. 13–14, 1984.
  8. ↑ Czyborra, Roman (1998). "ISO 8859-1 and MCS". ISO 8859 Alphabet Soup. Archived from the original on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2016-12-01.
  9. ↑ "VT220 Programmer Reference Manual". Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Table 2-3: DEC Multinational Character Set (C1 and GR Codes). Retrieved 2016-12-02.
  10. ↑ VAX/VMS User's Manual. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). April 1986. AI-Y517A-TE.
  11. ↑ DEC (February 1992) [November 1989]. "Chapter 2: Character Encoding - DEC Supplemental Graphic Character Set". VT420 Programmer Reference Manual (PDF) (2 ed.). Digital Equipment Corporation. pp. 24–25. EK–VT420–RM.002. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-01-29. Retrieved 2017-01-29.
  12. ↑ Flohr, Guido (2016) [2006]. "Locale::RecodeData::DEC_MCS - Conversion routines for DEC_MCS". CPAN libintl-perl. 1.0. Archived from the original on 2017-01-14. Retrieved 2017-01-14.
  13. ↑ Kostis, Kosta. "DEC Multinational Character Set (DEC MCS)". 1.20. Archived from the original on 2017-01-16. Retrieved 2017-01-16.
  14. ↑ Cowan, John Woldemar (1999-07-07). "DEC Multinational Character Set (1987) to Unicode". 0.1. Unicode, Inc. Archived from the original on 2017-02-18. Retrieved 2017-02-18.
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