Using extended character sets in LMS (XHCS)

Computer systems (hosts) and data display terminals each operate with one character set, i.e. a set of letters, digits and characters used to form words and other basic components of a language.

By extending the character set, country-specific characters such as umlauts (German) and accents (French) can also be offered within a particular character set.

A coded character set (CCS) is the unique representation of the characters in a character set in binary form. The content of a coded character set and its rules, such as sorting order and conversion guidelines, are defined by international standards.

Example

In the coded character set EBCDIC.DF.03-DRV (German reference version), the character “ä” is represented by the byte X’FB’, and in EBCDIC.DF.04-1 by X’43’.

Every coded character set (also called simply “code”) is identified by its unique name (coded character set name, CCSN).

Example

The code EBCDIC.DF.03-IRV (international reference version) is referred to as “EDF03IRV”.

The appendix at the end of the “XHCS” manual [15 (Related publications)] provides a list of all existing codes.

In BS2000, character sets are provided by the software product XHCS. By default, these include:

• 7-bit character sets such as, for example. ISO646 (international 7-bit character set, ASCII), EDF03IRV (international reference version, EBCDIC), EDF03DRV (German reference version, EBCDIC).

• 8-bit character sets such as, for example. ISO88591 (Latin Alphabet No.1, ASCII),

  EDF041

  (Latin Alphabet No.1, EBCDIC), EDF04DRV (extension of EDF03DRV) etc.

• The 3 Unicode character sets UTF16, UTF8 and UTFE.