SBCS PC Code for Each DBCS Language

The SBCS PC code pages used on IBM Personal System can be described in three code ranges, as shown in Code Range Comparison of SBCS-PC code with IBM PC Code.

• The code range from 20H through 7FH is the same as that of IBM PC code pages 437 and 850 except for the three code points 5CH, 7EH, and 7FH. The character assignments for 5CH and 7EH are different between countries, as drawn in National use of Code points 5CH and 7EH, and 7FH is currently not used.

  Note: Currently, code point 5CH is used as the pass delimiter regardless of code pages although this code point is not back slash in Japanese or Korean code pages and Japanese extended code pages have back slash at another code point.

• The range 80H through FFH is used for language-unique single-byte characters (Katakana for Japanese) and the first bytes of DBCS characters. The characters added in the extended code pages are also in this area.

Note that box characters have the following differences between code pages:

• Code page 950 for T-Chinese does not have box characters.

• The code points of box characters differ. For example, upward T is at 15H in DBCS countries' SBCS code pages (except for CP950) but at CAH in code pages 437 and 850. See SBCS Code Table of Each Combined Code Page for detail.

• Single-line box characters do not exist in some DBCS countries' SBCS code pages.

• Single/double─mixed─line box characters do not exist either in code page 850 or in DBCS countries' SBCS code pages.

We recommend the following approach to display box characters in DBCS systems.

• Do not hard-code box characters. For example, use symbols for box characters so that translators can redefine the symbols to cope with the code point difference.

• In case box characters are not available or you are not sure about its availability, use ASCII characters instead. Recommended characters instead of box characters shows our recommended set of ASCII characters.

                      Sign Name          ASCII
                      -------------------------
        .---------.    .   period         0x2E
        |    |    |    -   minus sign     0x2D
        |----+----|    +   plus sign      0x2B
        |    |    |    |   vertical line  0x7C
        '---------'    '   quote          0x2e






Recommended characters instead of box characters

        1st Hex ────>
   ┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐
   │Hex│ 0 │ 1 │ 2 │ 3 │ 4 │ 5 │ 6 │ 7 │ 8 │ 9 │ A │ B │ C │ D │ E │ F │
   ├───┼───┴───┼───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┼───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┤
2nd│ 0 │       │                       │                               │
Hex├───┤       │                       │                               │
 │ │ 1 │ Area  │ Area (2)              │ Area (3)                      │
 │ ├───┤ (1)   │                       │                               │
  │ 2 │       │                       │                               │
   ├───┤       │                       │                               │
   │ 3 │       │                       │                               │
   ├───┤       │                       │                               │
   │ 4 │       │                       │                               │
   ├───┤       │                       │                               │
   │ 5 │       │                       │                               │
   ├───┤       │                       │ Area (1) and (3) are          │
   │ 6 │       │                       │ different from IBM PC code    │
   ├───┤       │                       │                               │
   │ 7 │       │  same as IBM PC code  │ and unique to each DBCS       │
   ├───┤       │ (based on ASCII code) │ national language             │
   │ 8 │       │                       │                               │
   ├───┤       │                       │                               │
   │ 9 │       │                       │ Area (1) and (2) are SBCS     │
   ├───┤       │                       │ code, but area (3) includes   │
   │ A │       │                       │ code points for the first byte│
   ├───┤       │                       │ of double byte codes          │
   │ B │       │            5CH        │                               │
   ├───┤       │           ┌───┐       │                               │
   │ C │       │           │ * │       │                               │
   ├───┤       │           └───┘       │                               │
   │ D │       │ * : unique to      7EH│                               │
   ├───┤       │     each DBCS     ┌───┤                               │
   │ E │       │     national      │ * │                               │
   ├───┤       │     language      ├───┤                               │
   │ F │       │                   │   │                               │
   └───┴───────┴───────────────────┴───┴───────────────────────────────┘
Code Range Comparison of SBCS─PC code with IBM PC Code

┌────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┬──────────┐
│  LANGUAGE  (CPGID) │        5CH                │   7EH    │
├────────────────────┼───────────────────────────┼──────────┤
│ English    (00437) │ back─slash                │  tilde   │
│ Japanese   (00897) │ monetary symbol(Yen sign) │ overline │
│        Ext (01041) │ monetary symbol(Yen sign) │ overline │
│ Korean KS  (01088) │ monetary symbol(Won sign) │  tilde   │
│ S─Chinese  (01115) │ back─slash                │  tilde   │
│ T─Chinese  (00904) │ back─slash                │  tilde   │
│        Ext (01043) │ back─slash                │  tilde   │
│        Big5(01114) │ back─slash                │  tilde   │
└────────────────────┴───────────────────────────┴──────────┘
National use of Code points 5CH and 7EH