Multinational Character Set
| MIME / IANA | DEC-MCS |
|---|---|
| Alias(es) | IBM1100, CP1100, WE8DEC, csDECMCS, dec |
| Language(s) | English, various others |
| Extends | US-ASCII |
| Succeeded by | ISO 8859-1, BraSCII |
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 1100 (Multinational Emulation) since 1992.[3] Depending on associated sorting Oracle calls it WE8DEC, N8DEC, DK8DEC, S8DEC, or SF8DEC.[4][5]
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[6] and ISO 8859-1 in 1987.[7]
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 point | Unicode mapping | Character |
|---|---|---|
| 0xA8 | U+00A4 | ¤ |
| 0xD7 | U+0152 | Π|
| 0xDD | U+0178 | Ÿ |
| 0xF7 | U+0153 | œ |
| 0xFD | U+00FF | ÿ |
Character set
In the following table, code points that differ from ISO/IEC 8859-1 are shown boxed.
Letter Number Punctuation Symbol Other Undefined
See also
- Lotus International Character Set (LICS), a very similar character set
- BraSCII, a very similar character set
- 8-bit DEC Greek (Code page 1287)
- 8-bit DEC Turkish (Code page 1288)
- 8-bit DEC Hebrew
- 8-bit DEC Cyrillic (KOI-8 Cyrillic)
- 8-bit DEC Special Graphics (VT100 Line Drawing) (DEC-SPECIAL)
- 8-bit DEC Technical Character Set (DEC-TECHNICAL)
- DEC Kanji (JIS X 0208)
References
- ^ "VT220 Programmer Reference Manual" (2 ed.). Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). 1984 [1983].
- ^ "TinyTERM Emulator — National Replacement Character Set (NRCS)". Century Software. Archived from the original on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2016-12-01.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) [sic] - ^ a b "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 2016-12-02. Retrieved 2016-12-02.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 2016-12-03 suggested (help); Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) [1] [2] [3] - ^ 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 from the original (PDF) on 2017-02-14. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ "Oracle characterset descriptions for 9.2". Daylight Chemical Information Systems. 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-02-14. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 2016-06-17 suggested (help); Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ 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 from the original (PDF) on 2016-12-01. 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. […]
{{cite book}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 2016-12-02 suggested (help); Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ Czyborra, Roman (1998). "ISO 8859-1 and MCS". ISO 8859 Alphabet Soup. Archived from the original on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2016-12-01.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) [4] [5] - ^ "VT220 Programmer Reference Manual". Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Table 2-3: DEC Multinational Character Set (C1 and GR Codes). Retrieved 2016-12-02.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ VAX/VMS User's Manual. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). April 1986. AI-Y517A-TE.
- ^ 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 from the original (PDF) on 2017-01-29. Retrieved 2017-01-29.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ 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.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ Kostis, Kosta. "DEC Multinational Character Set (DEC MCS)". 1.20. Archived from the original on 2017-01-16. Retrieved 2017-01-16.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ 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.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|dead-url=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help)
| Early telecommunications | |
|---|---|
| ISO/IEC 8859 |
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| Bibliographic use | |
| National standards | |
| ISO/IEC 2022 | |
| Mac OS Code pages ("scripts") | |
| DOS code pages | |
| IBM AIX code pages | |
| Windows code pages | |
| EBCDIC code pages | |
| DEC terminals (VTx) | |
| Platform specific |
|
| Unicode / ISO/IEC 10646 | |
| TeX typesetting system | |
| Miscellaneous code pages | |
| Control character | |
| Related topics | |
