Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set

The Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set (LMBCS) is a proprietary multi-byte character encoding originally conceived in 1988 at Lotus Development Corporation with input from Bob Balaban and others.[1] Created around the same time and addressing some of the same problems, LMBCS could be viewed as parallel development and possible alternative to Unicode.[1] For maximum compatibility, later issues of LMBCS incorporate UTF-16 as a subset.[2][3]

Commercially, LMBCS was first introduced as the default character set of Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3 for DOS in March 1989[1][4] and Lotus 1-2-3/G Release 1 for OS/2[1] in 1990 replacing the 8-bit Lotus International Character Set (LICS) and ASCII used in earlier DOS-only versions of Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony.[5] LMBCS is also used in IBM/Lotus SmartSuite, Notes and Domino,[1] as well as in a number of third-party products.

LMBCS encodes the characters required for languages using the Latin,[6] Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Cyrillic[6] scripts, the Thai, Chinese, Japanese[6] and Korean writing systems, and technical symbols.

Encodings

Technically, LMBCS is a lead-byte encoding where code point 00_hex as well as code points 20_hex (32) to 7F_hex (127) are identical to ASCII[1] (as well as to LICS).[5]

Code point 00_hex is always treated as NUL character to ensure maximum code compatibility with existing software libraries dealing with null-terminated strings[1] in many programming languages such as C.[lower-alpha 1] This applies even to the UTF-16be codes, where code words with the form xx00_hex are mapped to private-use codes with the form F6xx_hex during encoding in order to avoid the use of NUL bytes,[7] and to escaped control characters, where 20_hex is added to the C0 (but not C1) control characters following the 0F_hex lead byte.[7]

Code points 01_hex to 1F_hex, which serve as control codes in ASCII, are used as lead bytes to switch the definition of code points above 7F_hex between several code groups (similar to code pages) and at the same time determine either a single- or multi-byte nature for the corresponding code group.[1]

For example, code group 1 (with group byte 01_hex)[1] is almost identical to the SBCS code page 850, whereas code group 16 (with group byte 10_hex)[1] is similar to the Japanese MBCS code page 932. Multi-byte characters can thus occupy two or three bytes.[7][6]

In canonical LMBCS, each character starts with its group byte.[1] To reduce the length, in optimized or compressed LMBCS a default code group or optimization group code can be defined on a per application or process basis (ideally chosen according to the highest likelihood of occurrence)[1] and must be communicated to the interpreting code in some way (f.e. by specifying the corresponding "LMBCS-n" name).[8] Thereby, the group byte can be omitted for these characters.[1] Lotus 1-2-3 retrieves the optimization group code from the file header of the corresponding source file,[7] whereas for Lotus Notes the optimization group code is fixed to be always 01_hex.[2][7]

Default	Group	Bytes	Description
N/A	00hex	1[7]	NUL
LMBCS-1	01hex	2[7]	Code page 850 (DOS Latin-1)[2][7]
LMBCS-2	02hex	2[7]	Code page 851 (DOS Greek)[2][7]
LMBCS-3	03hex	2[7]	Code page 1255 (Windows Hebrew)[2][7]
LMBCS-4	04hex	2[7]	Code page 1256 (Windows Arabic)[2][7]
LMBCS-5	05hex	2[7]	Code page 1251 (Windows Cyrillic)[2][7]
LMBCS-6	06hex	2[7]	Code page 852 (DOS Latin-2)[2][7]
N/A	07hex	1[7]	BEL[2]
LMBCS-8	08hex	2[7]	Code page 1254 (Windows Turkish)[2][9][7]
N/A	09hex	1[7]	TAB[2][9][7]
N/A	0Ahex	1[7]	LF[2][9][7]
LMBCS-11	0Bhex	2[7]	Code page 874 (Thai)[9][7]
(LMBCS-12)	0Chex	2[7]	Reserved[2]
N/A	0Dhex	1[7]	CR[2][9][7]
(LMBCS-14)	0Ehex	2[7]	Reserved[2]
(LMBCS-15)	0Fhex	2[7]	Remapped C0/C1 control codes[7]
LMBCS-16	10hex	3[7]	Code page 932/[2]943[7] (Japanese / Shift-JIS)[2][9]
LMBCS-17	11hex	3[7]	Code page 949/[2]1261[7] (Korean)[2][9]
LMBCS-18	12hex	3[7]	Code page 950[2][7] (Traditional Chinese / Taiwan / Big5)[2][9]
LMBCS-19	13hex	3[7]	Code page 936/[2]1386[7] (Simplified Chinese)[2][9]
(LMBCS-20)	14hex	3[7]	UTF-16 (Unicode)[2][3][7]
N/A	15hex	3	Reserved[2]
N/A	16hex	3	Reserved[2]
N/A	17hex	3	Reserved[2]
N/A	18hex	3	Reserved[2]
N/A	19hex	1[7]	Lotus 1-2-3 system range[9][7]
N/A	1Ahex	3	Reserved[2]
N/A	1Bhex	3	Reserved[2]
N/A	1Chex	3	Reserved[2]
N/A	1Dhex	3	Reserved[2]
N/A	1Ehex	3	Reserved[2]
N/A	1Fhex	3	Reserved[2]

Character set

Without prefix byte the code points 32 (20_hex) to 127 (7F_hex) are interpreted as follows (corresponding to LMBCS codes 32 to 127):

Single byte codes (ASCII/ISO-646-US[10])

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
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/2302

  Letter   Number   Punctuation   Symbol   Other   Undefined

Group 1

LMBCS group 1 code points 128 (80_hex) to 255 (FF_hex) are identical to the corresponding code points in code page 850 (DOS Latin-1), whereas code points 1 (01_hex) to 127 (7F_hex) are defined according to the following exception list (corresponding to LMBCS codes 256 to 383):

LMBCS Group 1, lower half[11][10]

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
0_ 0	NUL 0000	☺ 263A	☻ 263B	♥ 2665	♦ 2666	♣ 2663	♠ 2660	• 2022	◘ 25D8	○ 25CB	◙ 25D9	♂ 2642	♀ 2640	♪ 266A	♫ 266B	☼ 263C
1_ 16	► 25BA	◄ 25C4	↕ 2195	‼ 203C	¶ 00B6	§ 00A7	▬ 25AC	↨ 21A8	↑ 2191	↓ 2193	→ 2192	← 2190	∟ 221F	↔ 2194	▲ 25B2	▼ 25BC
2_ 32	¨ 00A8	~ 007E	˚ 02DA	^ 005E	` 0060	´ 00B4	“ 201C	' 0027	… 2026	-[lower-alpha 2] 2013	— 2014	‘[lower-alpha 3] 2018	’[lower-alpha 3] 2019		‹ 2039	› 203A
3_ 48	¨[lower-alpha 4] 00A8	~[lower-alpha 4] 007E	˚[lower-alpha 4] 02DA	^[lower-alpha 4] 005E	`[lower-alpha 4] 0060	´[lower-alpha 4] 00B4	„ 201E	‚ 201A	” 201D	‗ 2017		nbsp[lower-alpha 3] 00A0		�[lower-alpha 3] FFFD
4_ 64	Œ 0152	œ 0153	Ÿ 0178	˙[lower-alpha 3] 02D9	˚[lower-alpha 3][lower-alpha 4] 02DA		╞ 255E	╟ 255F	▌ 258C	▐ 2590	◊[lower-alpha 3] 25CA	⌘[lower-alpha 3] 2318	[lower-alpha 3] F8FF	[lower-alpha 3] F8FE	Ω[lower-alpha 3] 2126
5_ 80	╨ 2568	╤ 2564	╥ 2565	╙ 2559	╘ 2558	╒ 2552	╓ 2553	╫ 256B	╪ 256A	╡ 2561	╢ 2562	╖ 2556	╕ 2555	╜ 255C	╛ 255B	╧ 2567
6_ 96	ij 0133	IJ 0132	fi FB01	fl FB02	ʼn 0149	ŀ 0140	Ŀ 013F	¯[lower-alpha 3] 00AF	˘[lower-alpha 3] 02D8	˝[lower-alpha 3] 02DD	˛[lower-alpha 3] 02DB	ˇ[lower-alpha 3] 02C7	~[lower-alpha 3][lower-alpha 4] 007E	^[lower-alpha 3][lower-alpha 4] 005E
7_ 112	† 2020	‡ 2021	Ħ[lower-alpha 3] 0126	ħ[lower-alpha 3] 0127	Ŧ[lower-alpha 3] 0166	ŧ[lower-alpha 3] 0167	™ 2122	ℓ 2113	Ŋ[lower-alpha 3] 014A	ŋ[lower-alpha 3] 014B	ĸ[lower-alpha 3] 0138		Kr[lower-alpha 5]	⌐ 2310	₤ 20A4	₧ 20A7

  Letter   Number   Punctuation   Symbol   Other   Undefined   Mapped to a Unicode private use character

Group 2

LMBCS group 2 code points 128 (80_hex) to 255 (FF_hex) are identical to the corresponding code points in code page 851 (DOS Greek), whereas code points 1 (01_hex) to 127 (7F_hex) are defined according to the following exception list:[lower-alpha 6]

LMBCS Group 2, lower half[11]

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
0_ 0	NUL 0000	ͺ 037A	΅ 0385	Ϊ 03AA	Ϋ 03AB	― 2015	΄ 0384	ʼ 02BC	ʽ 02BD	‾ 203E					 F862	 F863
1_ 16	 F864	 F865	⇕ 21D5	⅞ 215E	⅝ 215D	⅜ 215C	⅛ 215B	 F867	⇑ 21D1	⇓ 21D3	⇒ 21D2	⇐ 21D0	 F868	⇔ 21D4	 F869	 F89F
2_ 32	 F89E	 F89D	 F89C	 F89B	 F89A	 F899	 F898	 F897	 F896	 F895	 F894	 F893	 F892	 F891	 F890	 F88F
3_ 48	 F88E	 F88D	 F88C	 F88B	 F88A	 F889	 F888	 F887	 F886	 F885	 F884	 F883	 F882	 F881	 F880	 F866
4_ 64	∠ 2220	∇ 2207	 F87F	 F87E	 F87D	 F87C	 F87B	 F87A	 F879	 F878	 F877	 F876	 F875	 F874	 F873	 F872
5_ 80	∂ 2202	ℵ 2135	ℑ 2111	ℜ 211C	 F871	 F870	 F86F	 F86E	 F86D	 F86C	 F86B	∋ 220B	∈ 2208	∉ 2209	⊆ 2286	⊇ 2287
6_ 96	⊗ 2297	⊕ 2295	✓ 2713	⋀ 22C0	∁ 2201	∫ 222B	∀ 2200	∃ 2203	 F86A	′ 2032	″ 2033	∞ 221E	∝ 221D	φ 03C6	∪ 222A	∩ 2229
7_ 112	≡ 2261	≅ 2245	≥ 2265	≤ 2264	⌠ 2320	⌡ 2321	≠ 2260	≈ 2248	⁄ 2044	∙ 2219	‰ 2030	√ 221A	ⁿ 207F	∅ 2205	⊂ 2282	⊃ 2283

  Letter   Number   Punctuation   Symbol   Other   Undefined   Mapped to a Unicode private use character

Group 6

LMBCS group 6 code points 128 (80_hex) to 255 (FF_hex) are identical to the corresponding code points in code page 852 (DOS Latin-2), whereas code points 1 (01_hex) to 127 (7F_hex) are defined according to the following exception list:[lower-alpha 6]

LMBCS Group 6, lower half[11]

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
0_ 0	NUL 0000	ā 0101	Ĉ 0108	ĉ 0109	Ċ 010A	ċ 010B	Ē 0112	ē 0113	Ė 0116	ė 0117	Ĝ 011C	ĝ 011D	Ġ 0120	ġ 0121	Ģ 0122	ģ 0123
1_ 16	Ĥ 0124	ĥ 0125	Ĩ 0128	ĩ 0129	Ī 012A	ī 012B	Į 012E	į 012F	Ĵ 0134	ĵ 0135	Ķ 0136	ķ 0137	Ļ 013B	ļ 013C	Ņ 0145	ņ 0146
2_ 32	Ō 014C	ō 014D	Ŗ 0156	ŗ 0157	Ŝ 015C	ŝ 015D	Ũ 0168	ũ 0169	Ū 016A	ū 016B	Ŭ 016C	ŭ 016D	Ų 0172	ų 0173	Ā 0100
3_ 48
4_ 64
5_ 80
6_ 96
7_ 112

  Letter   Number   Punctuation   Symbol   Other   Undefined

See also

• Compose key sequence
• GB 18030
• Symbol (typeface)
• Xerox Character Code Standard (XCCS)

Notes

1. Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3.0 for DOS and newer versions are written in C.
2. ‐ (U+2010), ‑ (U+2011), ‒ (U+2012), – (U+2013)
3. According to the documentation this code point is not supported by Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3.1+ for DOS and OS/2 and earlier.
4. For compatibility with Lotus 1-2-3 Release 5.0.
5. Unicode does not define a glyph for the crown currency symbol (Krone aka "Kr"), therefore this points to F8FB_hex in the Unicode Private Use Area (PUA).
6. According to the documentation code points 1 to 127 in this group are not supported by Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3.1+ for DOS and OS/2 and earlier. These versions only supported LMBCS code points 0 to 511, covering group 0 and 1 only.

References

1. Balaban, Bob (2001). "Multi-Language Character Sets – What They Are, How To Use Them" (PDF). Looseleaf Software, Inc. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-11-25. Retrieved 2016-11-25.
2. "Appendix A. Encoding Schemes". IBM Character Data Representation Architecture. IBM (CDRA). Lotus Multi-byte Character Set (LMBCS). Archived from the original on 2016-11-26. Retrieved 2016-11-26. For optimization purposes, the group byte is omitted in Notes for single-byte values between X'20' and X'FF'. For example, LMBCS is always optimized to group 0x01, which means that any character where the first byte is greater than 0x1F, has an implicit group byte of 0x01.
3. Scherer, Markus; Murray, Brendan (2000-06-02). "Re: MS Excel, Lotus 123 & Unicode". Archived from the original on 2016-12-06. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
4. "Kapitel 4. Kompatibilität mit anderen 1-2-3 Versionen – Zeichensätze" [Chapter 4. Compatibility with other 1-2-3 Versions – Character Sets]. Lotus 1-2-3 Version 3.1 Upgrader's Handbuch [Upgrader's handbook] (in German) (1 ed.). Cambridge, MA, USA: Lotus Development Corporation. 1989. pp. 4-10–4-11. 302173.
5. Kamenz, Alfred; Vonhoegen, Helmut (1992). Das große Buch zu Lotus 1-2-3 für DOS (in German) (1 ed.). Data Becker. pp. 131–132, 357–358. ISBN 3-89011-375-3.
6. Lotus – Inside Notes – The Architecture of Notes and the Domino Server (PDF). Lotus Development Corporation. 2000. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-12-12. Retrieved 2016-12-12. […] Notes uses a single character set, the Lotus Multibyte Character Set (LMBCS), to encode all text data used internally by its programs. Whenever Notes first inputs text encoded in a character set other than LMBCS, it translates the text into a LMBCS string, and whenever it must output text in a character set other than LMBCS, it translates the internal LMBCS string into the appropriate character set. Because all text is internally formatted by LMBCS, all text-processing operations […] are done in only one way. LMBCS uses up to three bytes in memory to represent a single text character […]
7. Murray, Brendan; Snyder-Grant, Jim, eds. (2016) [2000-02-09]. "ucnv_lmb.c". International Components for Unicode. International Business Machines (IBM).
8. Batutis, Edward J. (2001-11-03). "Re: converter types". International Components for Unicode (ICU). Archived from the original on 2016-12-06. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
9. "LMBCS" (in Japanese). 2009-02-03. Archived from the original on 2016-11-26. Retrieved 2016-11-26.
10. "Anhang 2. Der Lotus Multibyte Zeichensatz (LMBCS)" [Appendix 2. The Lotus Multibyte Character Set (LMBCS)]. Lotus 1-2-3 Version 3.1 Referenzhandbuch [Lotus 1-2-3 Version 3.1 Reference Manual] (in German) (1 ed.). Cambridge, MA, USA: Lotus Development Corporation. 1989. pp. A2-1–A2-13. 302168.
11. "lmb-excp.ucm". 2000-02-10.

Further reading

• Born, Günter (December 2000) [1990]. "Kapitel 2. LOTUS 1-2-3-Format (WK3)" [Chapter 2. Lotus 1-2-3 WK3 format]. Dateiformate – Eine Referenz – Tabellenkalkulation, Text, Grafik, Multimedia, Sound und Internet [File formats – a reference – spreadsheets, text, graphics, multimedia, sound and internet] (PDF) (in German). Bonn, Germany: Galileo Computing. ISBN 3-934358-83-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-11-29. Retrieved 2016-11-28. (Includes some information about LMBCS and Lotus system ranges.)
• "LMBCS tables". User's Guide – 123 Release 4 for Windows (Fax). Lotus Development. 1995 [1994-01-01]. CHAPTER: Appendix A Using the Lotus Multibyte Character Set. Fax 10955. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
• "Entering LMBCS characters". User's Guide – 123 Release 4 for Windows (Fax). Lotus Development. 1995 [1994-01-01]. CHAPTER: Appendix A Using the Lotus Multibyte Character Set. Fax 10954. Retrieved 2016-12-06.
• Lotus Support. "Notes from Support: SMTP MTA International Character Sets". IBM developerWorks. IBM. Archived from the original on 2016-12-08. Retrieved 2016-12-08.
• Character Translation Files (.CTF) by Notes 2.x and Country Language Service (.CLS) files by Notes 3.0 and higher contain information about LMBCS translation into other codepages

External links

• Berntrop-Bos, Lars (2014-07-10). "Blast from the past: LMBCS tables for Windows, OS/2, Unix and Macintosh". Archived from the original on 2016-11-26. Retrieved 2016-11-26.