Updated description for textZonedSignStyle to reflect that not all EBCDIC encodings use the same characters for the code points. Text in red is from public comment 116. ---------------------- Specifies the code points that are used to overpunch the sign nibble when the encoding is an ASCII-derived character set.encoding. The location of this sign nibble is indicated in the dfdl:textNumberPattern. This property is applicable when dfdl:textNumberRep is 'zoned' Used only when dfdl:encoding is an ASCII-derived character set encoding. The encoding must provide the character to single byte code point mapping used by the specified value of dfdl:textZonedSignStyle, as stated below. Valid values 'asciiStandard', 'asciiTranslatedEBCDIC', 'asciiCARealiaModified', and 'asciiTandemModified' Which characters are used to represent 'overpunched' (included) positive and negative signs, varies by encoding, Cobol compiler and system. The code points are fixed for EBCDIC systems but not for ASCII. In EBCDIC-based encodings, code points 0xC0 to 0xC9 or 0xF0 to 0xF9 represent a positive sign and digits 0 to 9 (typically characters '{ABCDEFGHI' or '0123456789'), and code points 0xD0 to 0xD9 or 0xB0 to 0xB9 represent a negative sign and digits 0 to 9 (typically characters '}JKLMNOPQR' or '^£¥·©§¶¼½¾ ' ). On parsing both ranges will be accepted. On unparsing the range 0xC0 to 0xC9 will be produced for positive signs and the range 0xD0 to 0xD9 will be produced for negative signs. asciiStandard: ASCII characters '0123456789' represent a positive sign and the corresponding digit. (Sign nibble for '+' is 0x3, which is the high nibble of these code points unmodified.) ASCII characters 'pqrstuvwxy' represent negative sign and digits 0 to 9. (Code points 0x70 to 0x79) asciiTranslatedEBCDIC: The overpunched character is the ASCII equivalent of the typical EBCDIC above. So the characters '{ABCDEFGHI' still represent a positive sign and digits 0 to 9. (These are code points 0x7B, 0x41 through 0x49). The characters '}JKLMNOPQR' still represent negative sign and digits 0 to 9. (These are code points 0x7D, 0x4A through 0x52). This case comes up if EBCDIC zoned decimal data is translated to ASCII as if it were textual data.) asciiCARealiaModified: In this style, the ASCII characters '0123456789' represent positive sign and digits 0 to 9 as in standard. However, ASCII characters from code points 0x20 to 0x29 are used for negative sign and the corresponding decimal digit. This doesn't translate well into printing characters. These characters include the space (' ') for zero, characters '!"#$%&' for 1 through 6, the single quote character "'" for 7, and the parenthesis '()' for 8 and 9. asciiTandemModified: In this style the ASCII characters '0123456789' represent positive sign and digits 0 to 9, but code points 0x80 to 0x89 are used to represent negative sign and a digit. There are no corresponding code points in the standard ASCII encoding since these values are all above 128 (decimal). This means the resultant bytes are not code points in standard ASCII, so the modeller must specify an encoding like ISO-8859-1 in order for such zoned decimals to parse without an encoding error. (Note that neither ISO-8859-1 encoding nor Unicode have assigned glyphs for these code points. They are considered control characters.) --------------------- Regards Steve Hanson Architect, IBM DFDL Co-Chair, OGF DFDL Working Group IBM SWG, Hursley, UK smh@uk.ibm.com tel:+44-1962-815848 Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU