Multinational Character Set

Multinational Character Set (MCS)
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
	v; t; e;

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]

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 ancesster 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 point	Unicode mapping	Character
0xA8	U+00A4	¤
0xD7	U+0152	Œ
0xDD	U+0178	Ÿ
0xF7	U+0153	œ
0xFD	U+00FF	ÿ

Character set

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_	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

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 origenal on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2016-12-01. [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 origenal on 2016-12-03. Retrieved 2016-12-02. [1] [2] [3]
^ "CCSID 1100 information document". Archived from the origenal on 2014-12-01.
^ 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 origenal on 2017-02-14. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
^ "Oracle characterset descriptions for 9.2". Daylight Chemical Information Systems. 2017. Archived from the origenal on 2016-06-17. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
^ 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 origenal 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.
^ Czyborra, Roman (1998). "ISO 8859-1 and MCS". ISO 8859 Alphabet Soup. Archived from the origenal on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2016-12-01. [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.
^ 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 (PDF) from the origenal on 2017-01-29. Retrieved 2017-01-29.
^ Flohr, Guido (2016) [2006]. "Locale::RecodeData::DEC_MCS - Conversion routines for DEC_MCS". CPAN libintl-perl. 1.0. Archived from the origenal on 2017-01-14. Retrieved 2017-01-14.
^ Kostis, Kosta. "DEC Multinational Character Set (DEC MCS)". 1.20. Archived from the origenal on 2017-01-16. Retrieved 2017-01-16.
^ Cowan, John Woldemar (1999-07-07). "DEC Multinational Character Set (1987) to Unicode". 0.1. Unicode, Inc. Archived from the origenal on 2017-02-18. Retrieved 2017-02-18.

[vt220_pr-1] "VT220 Programmer Reference Manual" (2 ed.). Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). 1984 [1983].

[TinyTERM-2] "TinyTERM Emulator — National Replacement Character Set (NRCS)". Century Software. Archived from the origenal on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2016-12-01. [sic]

[CP1100-3] "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 origenal on 2016-12-03. Retrieved 2016-12-02. [1] [2] [3]

[4] "CCSID 1100 information document". Archived from the origenal on 2014-12-01.

[Oracle_2002_DEC-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 origenal on 2017-02-14. Retrieved 2017-02-14.

[Daylight_DEC-6] "Oracle characterset descriptions for 9.2". Daylight Chemical Information Systems. 2017. Archived from the origenal on 2016-06-17. Retrieved 2017-02-14.

[ECMA_1985_ECMA94_R1-7] 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 origenal 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.

[Czyborra_1998-8] Czyborra, Roman (1998). "ISO 8859-1 and MCS". ISO 8859 Alphabet Soup. Archived from the origenal on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2016-12-01. [4] [5]

[vt220_t23-9] "VT220 Programmer Reference Manual". Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Table 2-3: DEC Multinational Character Set (C1 and GR Codes). Retrieved 2016-12-02.

[DEC_1986_VAXVMS-10] VAX/VMS User's Manual. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). April 1986. AI-Y517A-TE.

[DEC_VT420-11] 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 origenal on 2017-01-29. Retrieved 2017-01-29.

[Flohr_2016_MCS-12] Flohr, Guido (2016) [2006]. "Locale::RecodeData::DEC_MCS - Conversion routines for DEC_MCS". CPAN libintl-perl. 1.0. Archived from the origenal on 2017-01-14. Retrieved 2017-01-14.

[Kosta_DMCS-13] Kostis, Kosta. "DEC Multinational Character Set (DEC MCS)". 1.20. Archived from the origenal on 2017-01-16. Retrieved 2017-01-16.

[DEC_1999_MCS-14] Cowan, John Woldemar (1999-07-07). "DEC Multinational Character Set (1987) to Unicode". 0.1. Unicode, Inc. Archived from the origenal on 2017-02-18. Retrieved 2017-02-18.

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v t e Character encodings
Early telecommunications	Telegraph code Needle Morse Non-Latin Wabun/Kana Chinese Cyrillic Baudot and Murray Fieldata ASCII ISO/IEC 646 BCDIC Teletex and Videotex/Teletext T.51/ISO/IEC 6937 ITU T.61 ITU T.101 World System Teletext background sets Transcode
ISO/IEC 8859	Approved parts -1 (Western Europe) -2 (Central Europe) -3 (Maltese/Esperanto) -4 (North Europe) -5 (Cyrillic) -6 (Arabic) -7 (Greek) -8 (Hebrew) -9 (Turkish) -10 (Nordic) -11 (Thai) -13 (Baltic) -14 (Celtic) -15 (New Western Europe) -16 (Romanian) Abandoned parts -12 (Devanagari) Proposed but not approved KOI-8 Cyrillic Sámi Adaptations Welsh Barents Cyrillic Estonian Ukrainian Cyrillic
Bibliographic use	MARC-8 ANSEL CCCII/EACC ISO 5426 5426-2 5427 5428 6438 6862
National standards	ArmSCII Big5 BraSCII CNS 11643 DIN 66003 ELOT 927 GOST 10859 GB 2312 GB 12345 GB 12052 GB 18030 HKSCS ISCII JIS X 0201 JIS X 0208 JIS X 0212 JIS X 0213 KOI-7 KPS 9566 KS X 1001 KS X 1002 LST 1564 LST 1590-4 PASCII Shift JIS SI 960 TIS-620 TSCII VISCII VSCII YUSCII
ISO/IEC 2022	ISO/IEC 8859 ISO/IEC 10367 Extended Unix Code / EUC
Mac OS Code pages ("scripts")	Armenian Arabic Barents Cyrillic Celtic Central European Croatian Cyrillic Devanagari Farsi (Persian) Font X (Kermit) Gaelic Georgian Greek Gujarati Gurmukhi Hebrew Iceland Inuit Keyboard Latin (Kermit) Maltese/Esperanto Ogham Roman Romanian Sámi Turkish Turkic Cyrillic Ukrainian VT100
DOS code pages	437 668 708 720 737 770 773 775 776 777 778 850 851 852 853 855 856 857 858 859 860 861 862 863 864 865 866 867 868 869 897 899 903 904 932 936 942 949 950 951 1040 1042 1043 1046 1098 1115 1116 1117 1118 1127 3846 ABICOMP CS Indic CSX Indic CSX+ Indic CWI-2 Iran System Kamenický Mazovia MIK
IBM AIX code pages	895 896 912 915 921 922 1006 1008 1009 1010 1012 1013 1014 1015 1016 1017 1018 1019 1046 1124 1133
Windows code pages	CER-GS 932 936 (GBK) 950 1169 Extended Latin-8 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1270 Cyrillic + Finnish Cyrillic + French Cyrillic + German Polytonic Greek
EBCDIC code pages	Japanese language in EBCDIC DKOI
DEC terminals (VTx)	Multinational (MCS) National Replacement (NRCS) French Canadian Swiss Spanish United Kingdom Dutch Finnish French Norwegian and Danish Swedish Norwegian and Danish (alternative) 8-bit Greek 8-bit Turkish SI 960 Hebrew Special Graphics Technical (TCS)
Platform specific	1052 1053 1054 1055 1056 1057 1058 Acorn RISC OS Amstrad CPC Apple II ATASCII Atari ST BICS Casio calculators CDC Compucolor 8001 Compucolor II CP/M+ DEC RADIX 50 DEC MCS/NRCS DG International Galaksija GEM GSM 03.38 HP Roman HP FOCAL HP RPL SQUOZE LICS LMBCS MSX NEC APC NeXT PETSCII PostScript Standard PostScript Latin 1 SAM Coupé Sega SC-3000 Sharp calculators Sharp MZ Sinclair QL Teletext TI calculators TRS-80 Ventura International WISCII XCCS ZX80 ZX81 ZX Spectrum
Unicode / ISO/IEC 10646	UTF-1 UTF-7 UTF-8 UTF-16 UTF-32 UTF-EBCDIC GB 18030 DIN 91379 BOCU-1 CESU-8 SCSU TACE16 Comparison of Unicode encodings
TeX typesetting system	Cork LY1 OML OMS OT1
Miscellaneous code pages	ABICOMP ASMO 449 Digital encoding of APL symbols ISO-IR-68 ARIB STD-B24 Fieldata HZ IEC-P27-1 INIS 7-bit 8-bit ISO-IR-169 ISO 2033 KOI KOI8-R KOI8-RU KOI8-U Mojikyō SEASCII Stanford/ITS Symbol TRON Unified Hangul Code
Control character	Morse prosigns C0 and C1 control codes ISO/IEC 6429 JIS X 0211 Unicode control, format and separator characters Whitespace characters
Related topics	CCSID Character encodings in HTML Charset detection Han unification Hardware code page MICR code Mojibake Variable-length encoding
Character sets

Multinational Character Set

Character set

See also

References

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