IBM code page 936 is a character encoding for

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one that is simpler (usually shorter), according to a well-founded ordering. Examples include: ...

including 1880 user-defined characters (UDC), which was superseded in 1993. It is a combination of the single-byte

Code page 903 JIS X 0201, a Japanese Industrial Standard developed in 1969, was the first Japanese electronic character set to become widely used. The character set was initially known as JIS C 6220 before the JIS category reform. Its two forms were a 7-bit enc ...

and the double-byte Code page 928. Code page 946 uses the same double-byte component, but an extended single-byte component ( Code page 1042). IBM code page 936 should not be confused with the identically numbered Windows code page, which is a variant of the GBK encoding; GBK is called

Code page 1386 Windows code page 936 (abbreviated MS936, Windows-936 or (Code page 936 (IBM), ambiguously) CP936), is Microsoft's legacy (pre-Unicode) character encoding for representing simplified Chinese text Chinese character IT, on computers. It is one of th ...

by IBM. While GBK is a superset of the

EUC-CN Extended Unix Code (EUC) is a multibyte character encoding system used primarily for Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese (characters). The most commonly used EUC codes are variable-length encodings with a character belonging to an comp ...

encoding of

GB 2312 is a key official character set of the People's Republic of China, used for Simplified Chinese characters. GB2312 is the registered internet name for EUC-CN, which is its usual encoded form. ''GB'' refers to the Guobiao standards (国家标准), ...

, IBM-936 uses a different coded form of GB 2312, more closely resembling the relationship of

Shift JIS Shift JIS (also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by the Japanese company ASCII Corporation in conjunction with Microsoft and standardized as JIS ...

JIS X 0208 JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standards, Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. Th ...

History

The encoding was in use mainly during the 1980s and early 1990s. While the original IBM PC (

IBM 5150 International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is a publicly traded company ...

) lacked functionality for processing data in CJK languages, the

IBM 5550 IBM 5550 is a personal computer series that IBM marketed in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China in the 1980s and 1990s, for business use customers. In Japan, it was introduced in 1983 and promoted as "" because it had three roles in one machine: a Pers ...

possessed such functionality, and was available in models supporting Japanese,

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examp ...

. Code page 936 for Simplified Chinese accompanied code page 932 (

) for Japanese,

code page 934 In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication cha ...

for Korean and

code page 938 In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ch ...

for Traditional Chinese. The last revision of IBM-928/936/946 was documented in 1992, and it was superseded in 1993 by the

-based code pages 1380 through 1383; code page 1380 encodes the same characters as code page 928, but in a different layout. As of 1998, "some older Chinese packages" still included an algorithm for converting between IBM-936 and other encodings of GB 2312.

Status

Although chart definitions for Code page 1380 (the document C-H 3-3220-130 1993-11) are provided online by IBM, IBM does not similarly provide the chart definition for the older Code page 928 (the document C-H 3-3220-130 1992-11, i.e. an earlier revision of the same specification).

International Components for Unicode International Components for Unicode (ICU) is an open-source project of mature C/ C++ and Java libraries for Unicode support, software internationalization, and software globalization. ICU is widely portable to many operating systems and envir ...

(ICU) does not include an IBM-936 or IBM-946 codec, and uses the Windows code page for the "cp936" label. The ICU project does possess mapping data for IBM-946, which it makes publicly available, but does not ship it with ICU.

Structure

Code page 928, the double byte component, includes 9,355 characters as double-byte sequences starting with 0x81 through 0xAC and 0xF0 through 0xFA. The 0x81–AC lead byte range is used for GB 2312 characters: lead bytes 0x81–87 were used for non-hanzi, 0x88–9C are used for level 1 hanzi and 0x9C–AC are used for level 2 hanzi. Like

, trail (second) bytes are in the range 0x40–FC excluding 0x7F, allowing two GB 2312 rows to be encoded per lead byte; unlike Shift JIS, the bytes 0xA0–AC are not excluded from the lead byte range, since

JIS X 0201 JIS X 0201, a Japanese Industrial Standards, Japanese Industrial Standard developed in 1969, was the first Japanese electronic character set to become widely used. The character set was initially known as JIS C 6220 before the JIS category reform. ...

compatibility was not required. The 0xF0–FA lead byte range is used for IBM extensions: 0xF0 through 0xF9 are used for user-defined characters, and 0xFA is used for additional non-hanzi.

References

{{character encoding Chinese character encodings