MultiLingual System (MLS)

Product Overview

The MultiLingual System (MLS) environment encompasses many products. MLS provides extensive support to operate your system (including system interfaces, data management, and transaction processing software) in a language other than U.S. English. MLS gives you the flexibility to create, tailor, and run application systems for a multilingual, multicultural business environment.

General Features

The MLS environment includes a collection of operating system features, productivity tools, utilities, and compiler extensions. This environment enables you to

  • Translate online screens, forms, menus, help text, messages and documentation.

  • Choose from over 15 character-set processing options, 50 cultural conventions, and any number of languages in which an application system can run.

  • Display text using the language, characters, symbols, and formatting relevant to the individual users of your application system.

  • Define standard formats for the presentation of dates, times, numbers, and monetary data based on your needs.

  • Present an application system in several languages or conventions at the same time on the same system.

  • Dynamically change the language or convention setting so that you can access the application system with the language and formatting most useful to you.

  • Make changes to a previously translated application system and then translate only those changes, without retranslating the entire user interface.

  • Convert data encoded in one character set to another character set with multibyte conversion services.

Support for the Euro

The internationalization library supports the European currency symbol, the euro, as defined by the European Union. The following features support the euro.

  • Two coded-character sets (CCSs) based on the ISO 8859-15 (commonly referred to as Latin-9) standard are available in the internationalization library: Latin9ISO and Latin9EBCDIC.

    The Latin9ISO CCS is similar to the Latin1ISO CCS. The Latin9ISO CCS replaces the international currency symbol with the euro symbol and some Latin1 characters with Finnish and French characters.

    Translation tables are provided to and from Latin9ISO and Latin9EBCDIC, Latin1ISO, Codepage1252, and ASCII. Latin9ISO and Latin9EBCDIC are also available as INTMODE and EXTMODE values.

  • The following character sets include the euro:

    • In Latin1ISO, Latin2ISO, and Latin5ISO, the euro symbol replaces the international currency symbol at code position 0xA4.

    • In Latin1EBCDIC, Latin2EBCDIC, Latin5EBCDIC, and Arabic LatinGreek, the euro is defined at code position 0x9F.

    • In MacRoman, the euro is defined at code position 0xDB,

    • In Arabic20ISO and LatinGreekISO, the euro is at code position 0x4A and in Arabic20EBCDIC and LatinGreekEBCDIC at code position 0x45.

  • Codepages 1250, 1252, 1253, and 1254 contain the euro symbol at code position 0x80

  • Codepage 1251 contains the euro symbol at code position 0x80

HostCCS System Option

HostCCS is a system option that enables system administrators to identify and define the default coded-character set (CCS) used on their system when the following conditions exist:

  • The default system option CCSVERSION is ASERIESNATIVE.

  • The default CCS used on the system is not EBCDIC.

Programs interpret data and messages that are not encoded in EBCDIC by requesting that the CENTRALSUPPORT procedure return the value of the HostCCS.

Support for Japanese Characters

Support is available for Japanese custom (Kanji) characters when moving data between MCP systems and workstations running Microsoft operating systems.

Along with the standard Japanese characters, Japanese users might have an additional set of custom characters that they have added to their locally supported system. To access those custom characters, users must define their custom characters by using the Microsoft End User Defined Characters (EUDC) mechanism.

If existing data on MCP systems contain custom characters, in order for that data to display correctly on the workstation, a user must create the EUDC fonts so that the code points on the workstation match the code points to which the MCP system is mapped.

German Language Support

The SYSTEM/CONVENTIONS file contains a standard convention definition for Germany, and the SYSTEM/CCSFILE contains a standard German Ccsversion definition.

Ordering Information

The MultiLingual system is included as part of the operating environment. Source code is available for this product. It is included as part of the Integrated Operating Environment source product which you can license separately.

Product Information

Refer to the following documents for more information:

  • MultiLingual System Administration, Operations, and Programming Guide (8600 0288)

  • Message Translation Utility (MSGTRANS) Operations Guide (8600 0106)