Multinational Character Set

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]

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

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+0152Œ
0xDDU+0178Ÿ
0xF7U+0153œ
0xFDU+00FFÿ

Character set

Differences from ISO-8859-1 are shown with darker shading on top of their legend colours.

DEC Multinational Character Set[3][9][10][11][12][13][14]
_0 _1 _2 _3 _4 _5 _6 _7 _8 _9 _A _B _C _D _E _F
0_
0		 NUL
0000		 SOH
0001		 STX
0002		 ETX
0003		 EOT
0004		 ENQ
0005		 ACK
0006		 BEL
0007		 BS
0008		 HT
0009		 LF
000A		 VT
000B		 FF
000C		 CR
000D		 SO
000E		 SI
000F
1_
16		 DLE
0010		 DC1
0011		 DC2
0012		 DC3
0013		 DC4
0014		 NAK
0015		 SYN
0016		 ETB
0017		 CAN
0018		 EM
0019		 SUB
001A		 ESC
001B		 FS
001C		 GS
001D		 RS
001E		 US
001F
2_
32		 SP
0020		 !
0021		 "
0022		 #
0023		 $
0024		 %
0025		 &
0026		 '
0027		 (
0028		 )
0029		 *
002A		 +
002B		 ,
002C		 -
002D		 .
002E		 /
002F
3_
48		 0
0030		 1
0031		 2
0032		 3
0033		 4
0034		 5
0035		 6
0036		 7
0037		 8
0038		 9
0039		 :
003A		 ;
003B		 <
003C		 =
003D		 >
003E		 ?
003F
4_
64		 @
0040		 A
0041		 B
0042		 C
0043		 D
0044		 E
0045		 F
0046		 G
0047		 H
0048		 I
0049		 J
004A		 K
004B		 L
004C		 M
004D		 N
004E		 O
004F
5_
80		 P
0050		 Q
0051		 R
0052		 S
0053		 T
0054		 U
0055		 V
0056		 W
0057		 X
0058		 Y
0059		 Z
005A		 [
005B		 \
005C		 ]
005D		 ^
005E		 _
005F
6_
96		 `
0060		 a
0061		 b
0062		 c
0063		 d
0064		 e
0065		 f
0066		 g
0067		 h
0068		 i
0069		 j
006A		 k
006B		 l
006C		 m
006D		 n
006E		 o
006F
7_
112		 p
0070		 q
0071		 r
0072		 s
0073		 t
0074		 u
0075		 v
0076		 w
0077		 x
0078		 y
0079		 z
007A		 {
007B		 |
007C		 }
007D		 ~
007E		 DEL
007F
8_
128		 IND
0084		 NEL
0085		 SSA
0086		 ESA
0087		 HTS
0088		 HTJ
0089		 VTS
008A		 PLD
008B		 PLU
008C		 RI
008D		 SS2
008E		 SS3
008F
9_
144		 DCS
0090		 PU1
0091		 PU2
0092		 STS
0093		 CCH
0094		 MW
0095		 SPA
0096		 EPA
0097		 CSI
009B		 ST
009C		 OSC
009D		 PM
009E		 APC
009F
A_
160		 ¡
00A1		 ¢
00A2		 £
00A3		 ¥
00A5		 §
00A7		 ¤
00A4		 ©
00A9		 ª
00AA		 «
00AB
B_
176		 °
00B0		 ±
00B1		 ²
00B2		 ³
00B3		 µ
00B5
00B6		 ·
00B7		 ¹
00B9		 º
00BA		 »
00BB		 ¼
00BC		 ½
00BD		 ¿
00BF
C_
192		 À
00C0		 Á
00C1		 Â
00C2		 Ã
00C3		 Ä
00C4		 Å
00C5		 Æ
00C6		 Ç
00C7		 È
00C8		 É
00C9		 Ê
00CA		 Ë
00CB		 Ì
00CC		 Í
00CD		 Î
00CE		 Ï
00CF
D_
208		 Ñ
00D1		 Ò
00D2		 Ó
00D3		 Ô
00D4		 Õ
00D5		 Ö
00D6		 Œ
0152		 Ø
00D8		 Ù
00D9		 Ú
00DA		 Û
00DB		 Ü
00DC		 Ÿ
0178		 ß
00DF
E_
224		 à
00E0		 á
00E1		 â
00E2		 ã
00E3		 ä
00E4		 å
00E5		 æ
00E6		 ç
00E7		 è
00E8		 é
00E9		 ê
00EA		 ë
00EB		 ì
00EC		 í
00ED		 î
00EE		 ï
00EF
F_
240		 ñ
00F1		 ò
00F2		 ó
00F3		 ô
00F4		 õ
00F5		 ö
00F6		 œ
0153		 ø
00F8		 ù
00F9		 ú
00FA		 û
00FB		 ü
00FC		 ÿ
00FF

  Letter   Number   Punctuation   Symbol   Other   Undefined

See also

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. "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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