MIK (character set)


MIK is an 8-bit Cyrillic code page used with DOS. It is based on the character set used in the Bulgarian Pravetz 16 IBM PC compatible system. Kermit calls this character set "BULGARIA-PC" / "bulgaria-pc". In Bulgaria, it was sometimes incorrectly referred to as code page 856. This code page is known by FreeDOS as Code page 3021.
This is the most widespread DOS/OEM code page used in Bulgaria, rather than CP 808, CP 855, CP 866 or CP 872.
Almost every DOS program created in Bulgaria, which has Bulgarian strings in it, was using MIK as encoding, and many such programs are still in use.

Character set

Each character is shown with its equivalent Unicode code point and its decimal code point. Only the second half of the table is shown, the first half being the same as ASCII.

Binary character manipulations

The MIK code page maintains in alphabetical order all Cyrillic letters which enables very easy character manipulation in binary form:
10xx xxxx - is a Cyrillic Letter
100x xxxx - is an Upper-case Cyrillic Letter
101x xxxx - is a Lower-case Cyrillic Letter
In such case testing and character manipulating functions as:
IsAlpha, IsUpper, IsLower, ToUpper and ToLower,
are bit operations and sorting is by simple comparison of character values.