ISO-8859 Character Set
ISO-8859 is an eight-bit character code which extends
the well-known seven-bit code, ASCII.
There are many versions of ISO-8859, one for each major language
group, called Code Pages. The only code page listed
here is the first, ISO-8859-1, known as "Latin1". Latin1 is
intended for English and Western European Languages, but does not
do a very good job, as it does not even require the characters
required for British spelling. The Microsoft character set
(sometimes called CP1252) adds a few more characters and
surprisingly does a much better job than ISO-8859.
ASCII defines the appearance of characters with codes
from (32 decimal, 20 hexadecimal, 40 octal) to
(126 decimal, 7E hexadecimal, 176 octal), and ISO-8859
is exactly the same for these characters.
ASCII does not define the appearance of characters with codes
from (0 decimal, 0 hexadecimal, 0 octal) to
(31 decimal, 1F hexadecimal, 37 octal), but does
assign meanings/uses to them; ISO-8859
defines nothing for these characters: neither appearance
nor meaning.
Character code (127 decimal, 7F hexadecimal, 177 octal) is
defined by ASCII to be the DEL (delete) code, but it is not
supposed to be printable, and no appearance is defined for it.
ASCII, being a seven bit code, does not include anything
with codes greater than (127 decimal, 7F hexadecimal, 177 octal);
these are the only codes that ISO-8859 specifies.
Codes between (decimal 128, hexadecimal 80, octal 200) and
(decimal 159, hexadecimal 9F, octal 237) inclusive, are not
defined by ISO-8859. Some equipment provides special non-standard
meanings for these codes; the prime example is Microsoft Windows
which puts 27 special characters in these positions. The extra
microsoft characters are very useful (six of them are necessary
for correct English and Latin orthography), so it is something
of a surprise that ISO ignored them, and an annoyance that they can
not be relied upon on non-Windows machines.
Codes between (decimal 160, hexadecimal A0, octal 240) and
(decimal 255, hexadecimal FF, octal 377) inclusive are defined
by ISO-8859. The Microsoft character sets are identical to
ISO-8859 in these positions.
Summary:
- First 32 codes: Control characters
- Next 95 codes: Standard ASCII, ISO-8859, and Microsoft, all the same
- Next 1 code: DEL
- Next 32 codes: ignored by ISO-8859, defined by Microsoft, not in ASCII
- Next 96 codes: Identical in ISO-8859 and Microsoft, not in ASCII
Pure ISO-8859-1 Character Table
Windows CP1252 Character Table
ASCII plus ISO-8859-1 Character Table
