Code pages and extended code pages

A code page maps each character of text to the characters in a character set or to the characters associated to a Unicode point. Two types of code pages exist:

A traditional code page includes EBCDIC or ASCII encodings only; it can be used with FOCA character sets and TrueType and OpenType fonts.
An extended code page includes multiple encodings within a single code page and can contain EBCDIC or ASCII encodings along with the Unicode equivalent value; it can be used with TrueType and OpenType fonts.

AFP outline fonts and AFP raster fonts use traditional code pages to map each character of text to the characters in a character set. TrueType and OpenType fonts use traditional and extended code pages to map each character of text to the characters associated with a Unicode point.

Each code point in an extended code page can be mapped to one or more Unicode values. Extended code pages allow code pages that contain user-defined characters (that is, those characters that are not registered with IBM® and assigned a GCGID value) to be used with TrueType and OpenType fonts.

Table 1 shows the extended code page files that you can download from the IBM Extended Code Pages web page at:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psd1P4000878

Table 1. Downloadable extended code page files
Font library	Extended code page file
General	`ecp_gl.zip`
Japanese	`ecp_japan.zip`
Korean	`ecp_korea.zip`
Simplified Chinese	`ecp_chs.zip`
Traditional Chinese	`ecp_cht.zip`

Summary tables for code pages lists code pages and extended code pages in the z/OS® Font Collection.