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

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_ 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   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. 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 2016-12-02. 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 2017-02-14. 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 2016-12-01. 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.