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 / 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

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 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

Π0152

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

• 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

1. "VT220 Programmer Reference Manual" (2 ed.). Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). 1984 [1983].
2. "TinyTERM Emulator — National Replacement Character Set (NRCS)". Century Software. 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. from the original on 2016-12-03. Retrieved 2016-12-02. [1] [2] [3]
4. . 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. (PDF) from the original on 2017-02-14. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
6. "Oracle characterset descriptions for 9.2". Daylight Chemical Information Systems. 2017. 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]. (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. from the original on 2016-12-01. Retrieved 2016-12-01. [4] [5]
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. (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. from the original on 2017-01-14. Retrieved 2017-01-14.
13. Kostis, Kosta. "DEC Multinational Character Set (DEC MCS)". 1.20. from the original on 2017-01-16. Retrieved 2017-01-16.
14. Cowan, John Woldemar (1999-07-07). . 0.1. Unicode, Inc. Archived from the original on 2017-02-18. Retrieved 2017-02-18.