In this article, we will explore in depth the topic of Multinational Character Set, which has been the subject of interest and debate in various areas. From its origins to its relevance today, we will address its many facets and its impact on society. Through an exhaustive and rigorous analysis, we seek to shed light on different aspects related to Multinational Character Set, providing valuable information and diverse perspectives to enrich the knowledge of our readers. By exposing data, testimonies and relevant studies, we aim to offer a complete and objective vision that allows us to understand the importance of Multinational Character Set in different contexts and situations.
MIME / IANA | DEC-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). MCS is registered as IBM code page/CCSID 1100 (Multinational Emulation) since 1992. Depending on associated sorting Oracle calls it WE8DEC, N8DEC, DK8DEC, S8DEC, or SF8DEC.
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 and ISO 8859-1 in 1987.
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 | Œ |
0xDD | U+0178 | Ÿ |
0xF7 | U+0153 | œ |
0xFD | U+00FF | ÿ |
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
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 |
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.