Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!haven!decuac!shlump.nac.dec.com!mountn.dec.com!minow
From: minow@mountn.dec.com (Martin Minow)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: ASCII for national characters
Summary: Differences from Dec Multinational
Message-ID: <1084@mountn.dec.com>
Date: 21 Nov 89 16:50:33 GMT
References: <472@enea.se> <1073@mountn.dec.com>
Reply-To: minow@mountn.dec.com (Martin Minow)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 38

I received a mail request for the differences between Latin-1 and
Dec Multinational (as implemented on the VT200 and VT300 series terminals).
The following might be of interest to others.

ISO Latin-1 is almost identical to Multinational.  The "blank spots"
in Multinational were filled in, and one or two character were changed,
possibly so Dec wouldn't have a competitive advantage.  We released
our first products with multinational in around 1983-84, during the
standardization process for Latin-1.  Both tables are in the VT300
documentation.  Here is how to convert Multinational to Latin-1,
(assuming that Latin-1/Multinational is in the right-half of the 8-bit
code space):

  A4	add currency symbol
  A6	add broken vertical bar
  A8	remove currency symbol, add dieresis
  AC	add logical not symbol
  AD	add small dash (soft hyphen)
  AE	add "registered" symbol (R inside a circle)
  AF	add macron (raised horizontal line)
  B4	add acute accent
  B8	add cedilla (comma, centered in the display area)
  BE	add 3/4
  D0	add Icelandic capital D-
  D7	remove OE, add multiplication sign
  DD	remove Y-dieresis, add Y with acute accent
  DE	add Icelandic capital Thorn (looks like Greek theta)
  F0	add Icelandic lower-case d-
  F7	remove oe, add division sign
  FD	remove y-dieresis, add y with acute accent
  FE	add Icelandic lower-case thorn
  FF	add y-dieresis (exists in lower-case only)

This is, of course, not an official list; and I apologize for any errors.

Martin Minow
minow@thundr.enet.dec.com
The above does not represent the position of Digital Equipment Corporation