Windows Code page 936 (abbreviated MS936, Windows-936 or (ambiguously) CP936), is Microsoft's 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), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions, ...

, one of the four

DBCS A double-byte character set (DBCS) is a character encoding in which either all characters (including control characters) are encoded in two bytes, or merely every graphic character not representable by an accompanying single-byte character set ...

s for

East Asian languages The East Asian languages are a language family (alternatively ''macrofamily'' or ''superphylum'') proposed by Stanley Starosta in 2001. The proposal has since been adopted by George van Driem. Classifications Early proposals Early proposals of s ...

. Originally, Windows-936 covered

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 ...

(in its

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

form), but it was expanded to cover most of GBK with the release of

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

. IBM's Code page 936 is a different encoding for Simplified Chinese, although

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 environ ...

does not include an IBM-936 codec, and uses the Windows code page for the "cp936" label. IBM's code page for GBK coverage is Code page 1386 (CP1386 or IBM-1386), which is defined as a combination of the single byte

Code page 1114 Code page 950 is the code page used on Microsoft Windows for Traditional Chinese. It is Microsoft's implementation of the ''de facto'' standard Big5 character encoding. The code page is not registered with IANA, and hence, it is not a standard to ...

and the double byte Code page 1385. It was superseded by

code page 54936 GB 18030 is a Chinese government standard, described as ''Information Technology — Chinese coded character set'' and defines the required language and character support necessary for software in China. GB18030 is the registered Internet n ...

(

GB 18030 GB 18030 is a Chinese government standard, described as ''Information Technology — Chinese coded character set'' and defines the required language and character support necessary for software in China. GB18030 is the registered Internet n ...

), but was still prevalent in use. The

Windows command prompt Command Prompt, also known as cmd.exe or cmd, is the default command-line interpreter for the OS/2, eComStation, ArcaOS, Microsoft Windows (Windows NT family and Windows CE family), and ReactOS operating systems. On Windows CE .NET 4.2, W ...

uses CP936 as the default code page for simplified Chinese installations, although part of the GB 18030 was made mandatory for all software products sold in China. In 2002, the IANA Internet name GBK was registered with Windows-936's mapping,Application of IANA Charset Registration for GBK
/ref> making it the ''de facto'' GBK definition on the Internet. The concepts of "Windows-936", "GBK", "GB2312" and "EUC-CN" are sometimes confused in various software products. Code pages MS936 and 1386 are not identical to GBK because a code page encodes characters, whereas GBK only defines code points. In addition, the Euro sign (€), encoded as 0x80 in both Windows-936 and IBM-1386, is not defined in GBK. On the other hand, 95 characters defined in GBK were initially not encoded into Windows-936. This is partly resolved in later versions of Windows and, as in Windows 7, all GBK characters not in the Unicode BMP

Private Use Area In Unicode, a Private Use Area (PUA) is a range of code points that, by definition, will not be assigned characters by the Unicode Consortium. Three private use areas are defined: one in the Basic Multilingual Plane (), and one each in, and nearl ...

can be displayed using code page 936, but encoding the 95 characters was still not supported . However, "CP936" and "GBK" are often used interchangeably because of the popularity of Microsoft products on the Chinese market when GBK was then published. Since GBK superseded GB 2312 long ago, these two terms have also become virtually equivalent to many users, so "Windows-936", "GBK" and "GB 2312" are misunderstood by many to mean the same thing while they actually differ significantly. Instead of supporting precisely EUC-CN / GB 2312, most modern-day Windows-based software products mean partial support for GBK via Windows-936 when they use the term "GB 2312" as a character encoding option. This can be observed in products such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Notepad++.

Notes

References

External links

Windows-936:
Microsoft's reference for Windows-936Code page file for Windows-936Mapping of Windows-936 to UnicodeICU demonstration of Windows-936International Components for Unicode (ICU), windows-936-2000.ucm
IBM-1386:
ICU demonstration of IBM-1386ICU mapping of IBM-1386 to Unicode
{{character encoding

1386 Year 1386 ( MCCCLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events January–December * February 24 – Elizabeth of Bosnia, the mother of the overthrown Queen Mary ...

Encodings of Asian languages