Lotus International Character Set Explained
The Lotus International Character Set (LICS) is a proprietary single-byte character encoding introduced in 1985 by Lotus Development Corporation. It is based on the 1983 DEC Multinational Character Set (MCS) for VT220 terminals. As such, LICS is also similar to two other descendants of MCS, the ECMA-94 character set of 1985 and the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set of 1987.
LICS was first introduced as the character set of Lotus 1-2-3 Release 2 for DOS in 1985. It is also utilized by 2.01, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 as well as by Symphony. It was also utilized in a number of third-party spreadsheet products emulating the file format. LICS was superseded by the Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set (LMBCS) introduced by Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3 in 1989.
Character set
Codepoints 20hex (32) to 7Fhex (127) are identical to ASCII (as well as to LMBCS). For some characters the table also lists dedicated Lotus 1-2-3 compose key sequences to ease character input beyond the Alt Numpad input method.
See also
Further reading
- Book: Dateiformate - Eine Referenz - Tabellenkalkulation, Text, Grafik, Multimedia, Sound und Internet . German . File formats - a reference - spreadsheets, text, graphics, multimedia, sound and internet . Günter . Born .
de:Günter Born
. December 2000 . 1990 . . Kapitel 1. LOTUS 1-2-3-Format (WKS/WK1) . Chapter 1. Lotus 1-2-3 WKS/WK1 format . Bonn, Germany . 3-934358-83-7 . 2016-11-28 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20161129191803/http://www.aboutvb.de/bas/formate/pdf/wks.pdf . 2016-11-29. (May help retrieving info on LICS.)
- Book: HP 200LX User's Guide . Hewlett-Packard Singapore (Private) Limited, Asia-Pacific Personal Computer Division . Singapore . 1 . October 1996 . 1216-90001 . 2016-11-29 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20161130124719/http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/bpia5259.pdf . 2016-11-30 . 21-6 – 21-7, 25-9 – 25-13, 26-14 – 26-18, C-1 – C-4, D-1 – D-10 . Your palmtop supports code pages 850 and 437....1-2-3 uses LICS, the Lotus International Character Set. Most LICS characters are included in code page 850; the few that are not included will not display on the palmtop..
- Web site: [ftp://ftp.lotus.com/desktop/LotusDoc/10955.txt LMBCS tables ]. User's Guide - 123 Release 4 for Windows . CHAPTER: Appendix A Using the Lotus Multibyte Character Set . . 1995 . 1994-01-01 . Fax . Fax 10955 . 2016-12-06.
- Web site: Worksheet File Format from Lotus - Introduction and Quick Reference . Lotus Development Corporation . Lotus Development Corporation . December 1984 . Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA . File Format Documentation Collection . 2016-12-12 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20161130165601/http://www.schnarff.com/file-formats/lotus-1-2-3/WSFF1.TXT . 2016-11-30.
- Web site: Worksheet File Format from Lotus - Summary of Record Types . Lotus Development Corporation . Lotus Development Corporation . December 1984 . Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA . File Format Documentation Collection . 2016-12-12 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20161201001003/http://www.schnarff.com/file-formats/lotus-1-2-3/WSFF2.TXT . 2016-12-01.
- Web site: Worksheet File Format from Lotus - Appendix A - Cell Format Encoding . Lotus Development Corporation . Lotus Development Corporation . December 1984 . Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA . File Format Documentation Collection . 2016-12-12 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20161201001047/http://www.schnarff.com/file-formats/lotus-1-2-3/WSFF3.TXT . 2016-12-01.
- Web site: Worksheet File Format from Lotus - Appendix B - The Formula Compiler . Lotus Development Corporation . Lotus Development Corporation . December 1984 . Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA . File Format Documentation Collection . 2016-12-12 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20161201001115/http://www.schnarff.com/file-formats/lotus-1-2-3/WSFF4.TXT . 2016-12-01.
- Web site: Addendum to Worksheet File Format Document . Lotus Development Corporation . Lotus Development Corporation . 1985-02-19 . Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA . File Format Documentation Collection . 2016-12-12 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20161201001145/http://www.schnarff.com/file-formats/lotus-1-2-3/WSFF5.TXT . 2016-12-01.
- Lotus 1-2-3 Release 2.x User Guide Appendix A. (NB. Reportedly contains info on LICS.)
- The file
LICS.EAT
("Extended ASCII Table") in Lotus 1-2-3 Release 2.x for DOS reportedly contains detailed info on LICS.
- The Lotus Symphony 1.2 and Notes 2.1 Character Translation File (CTF)
LICS850.CTF
and the Notes 3.0 Country Language Services (CLS) file L_LICS.CLS
contain LICS character translation information.
- Web site: Bug 87222 - Summary: Works spreadsheet: wrong encoding . 2014-12-11 . . 2016-12-12. (NB. Temporarily left here for quick reference, but contains somewhat confused info.)
- https://sourceforge.net/p/libwps/code/ci/master/tree/src/lib/libwps_tools_win.cpp (Contains a LICS to Unicode conversion routine, which, however, is buggy)