VTxxx national mode

VTxxx national mode supports the national replacement character set, which is a group of 7-bit character sets.

Only one character set from the group is available for use at any one time. VT220 also supports the standard 7-bit ASCII character set as part of the national mode. The VT220 terminal supports the following national languages in 7-bit ASCII character sets:

• British

• Danish

• Dutch

• Finnish

• French

• French/Canadian

• German

• Italian

• Norwegian

• Spanish

• Swedish

• Swiss

• U.S. English

To use a national mode, the system requires mapping tables to map incoming ASCII data into Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) and outgoing EBCDIC data into ASCII when operating in VTxxx full-screen mode.

Use the coded character set identifier (CCSID) parameter on the Telnet command to select a national mode, that is an NLS mapping table.

Entering a numeric value that represents a registered CCSID value in the range 1 to 65 553 is one way to identify the appropriate mapping table. The AS/400^® International Application Development V4R2 book contains details of registered CCSIDs.

The NLS mapping tables are built dynamically to a remote system the first time Telnet is used, and are based on DEC national replacement character sets. Because the character sets are 7-bit based, they can contain only the unique characters from one country. Because the DEC multinational character set is 8-bit based, it allows for the inclusion of the unique characters from a group of countries.

Identifying table objects

You can identify the table objects (*TBL) using the Work with Object command: WRKOBJ OBJ(QUSRSYS/Q*) OBJTYPE(*TBL)

All of the system table objects are in the QUSRSYS library.

The table objects are named Qxxxyyyzzz, where xxx is the FROM code page, yyy is the TO character set, and zzz is the TO code page.

Here are the guidelines for the outgoing (EBCDIC-to-ASCII) table:

• The FROM code page ID is taken from the code page ID in QCHRID of message description CPX8416 (use WRKMSGD CPX8416 to display), 37 in the following figure from a US English-based system.

• The TO character set and code page are derived from the CCSID parameter used with the Telnet command.

Here are the guidelines for the incoming (ASCII-to-EBCDIC) table:

• The FROM code page ID is derived from the CCSID parameter used with the Telnet command.

• The TO character set and code page are taken from the character set ID and code page ID in QCHRID of message description CPX8416 (use WRKMSGD CPX8416 to display), 697 and 37 in the following figure from a US English-based system.

                             System: SYSNAM01                                   
Message ID . . . . . . . . . :     CPX8416                                      
Message file . . . . . . . . :     QCPFMSG                                      
Library . . . . . . . . . :        QSYS                                         
                                                                                
Message . . . . :                                                               
QCHRID     697 37      QCURSYM           $ QDATFMT         MDY QDATSEP /        
QDECFMT          QLEAPADJ    0 QCCSID 37       QTIMSEP         : QLANGID ENU    
QCNTRYID   US QIGCCDEFNT *NONE