In computing HP Roman is a family of
character set
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values tha ...
s consisting of HP Roman Extension, HP Roman-8, HP Roman-9 and several variants. Originally introduced by
Hewlett-Packard around 1978, revisions and adaptations were published several times up to 1999. The 1985 revisions were later standardized as
IBM codepage
In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some co ...
s 1050 and 1051. Supporting many European languages, the character sets were used by various HP workstations, terminals, calculators as well as many printers, also from third-parties.
Overview
HP Roman is a family of
single byte character encoding
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...
s supporting several Latin script based languages of Europe. It was originally introduced by
Hewlett-Packard around 1978 as 7- and 8-bit
HP Roman Extension for some of their
computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and ...
s and
printer
Printer may refer to:
Technology
* Printer (publishing), a person or a company
* Printer (computing), a hardware device
* Optical printer for motion picture films
People
* Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist
* James ...
s. Early versions of the 8-bit variant were also used by some HP workstations in 1978/1979. Several revisions led to more characters being added before the 8-bit variant of the character set became officially known as
HP Roman-8
In computing HP Roman is a family of character sets consisting of HP Roman Extension, HP Roman-8, HP Roman-9 and several variants. Originally introduced by Hewlett-Packard around 1978, revisions and adaptations were published several times up ...
in 1983.
Soon later, this became the default character set of the
HP-UX operating system and the page description language
PCL for
inkjet
Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range from small inexpens ...
and
laser printer
Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to ...
s in 1984. The character set was again expanded in 1985.
A
modified adaptation of the 1984 definition of Roman-8 was used in the
HP Portable
The Hewlett-Packard HP 110 (aka HP Portable and HP 45710A) is an MS-DOS compatible portable computer released in 1984. It uses a Harris 80C86 running at 5.33 MHz with of RAM. It has an 80 character by 16 line monochrome () l ...
series of computers,
whereas a
derivation
Derivation may refer to:
Language
* Morphological derivation, a word-formation process
* Parse tree or concrete syntax tree, representing a string's syntax in formal grammars
Law
* Derivative work, in copyright law
* Derivation proceeding, a proc ...
of the updated 1985 definition of Roman-8 was used in several early
RPL calculators and corresponding
thermal printer
Thermal printing (or direct thermal printing) is a digital printing process which produces a printed image by passing paper with a thermochromic coating, commonly known as thermal paper, over a print head consisting of tiny electrically heated ...
s since 1986.
The latest off-spring of the family is
HP Roman-9, which was introduced in 1999 to include the
euro sign.
PCL Ventura International is based on HP Roman-8.
Character set
Roman Extension
The character set was originally introduced by
Hewlett-Packard as
extended ASCII 7-bit codepage named HP Roman Extension,
which existed at least since 1978.
This character set was used as a secondary character set in conjunction with the primary character set, which was identical to ASCII, except for character 127, which was a medium shaded box instead of the delete character. The first 32 characters, that normally functioned as
C0 control codes
The C0 and C1 control code or control character sets define control codes for use in text by computer systems that use ASCII and derivatives of ASCII. The codes represent additional information about the text, such as the position of a cursor, ...
, also had graphical non-control alternatives, that could appear during self-test or display functions mode. Switching between character sets was done using the
Shift Out and Shift In characters
Shift Out (SO) and Shift In (SI) are ASCII control characters 14 and 15, respectively (0x0E and 0x0F). These are sometimes also called "Control-N" and "Control-O".
The original meaning of those characters provided a way to shift a coloured ribbon ...
, or alternatively, on systems supporting 8-bit mode, using the high bit of the character. Before the name "Roman-8" was established for the 8-bit variant in 1983, this was sometimes called "8-bit Roman Extension" or "HP Roman-8 Extension". Over the years both variants were revised to include more characters. The final 1985 revision of the secondary character set was also standardized by
IBM in 1989 as code page 1050 (CP1050 or ibm-1050).
Although strictly speaking not part of Roman Extension, the following table shows those rows of the primary character set that differed from ASCII. Note that the first two rows are normally the same and only appear as graphical characters in special circumstances, as described above. Although some of the Unicode control pictures conventionally use three characters rather than two, those "diagonal lettering glyphs are only exemplary; alternate representations may be, and often are used in the visible display of control codes".
The following table shows the 1982 version; a current variant is shown in the
Roman-8 section below. The table assumes 8-bit mode is used; if not, subtract 128 (80
16) from the character code.
Roman-8
HP Roman-8 is an 8-bit
single byte character encoding
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...
that is mainly used on
HP-UX[ and many Hewlett-Packard][ and PCL compatible printers. The name ''Roman-8'' appeared in 1983,][ but a precursor of the character set was already used by the ]HP 250
The HP 250 was a multiuser business computer by Hewlett-Packard running HP 250 BASIC language as its OS with access to HP's IMAGE database management. It was produced by the General Systems Division (GSD), but was a major repackaging of desk ...
and HP 300
HP may refer to:
Businesses and organisations
* HP Inc., an American technology company
** Hewlett-Packard, the predecessor to HP Inc.
* HP Foods
** HP Sauce, formerly made by HP Foods
* Handley Page, an aircraft company
* Hindustan Petrole ...
workstations since 1978/1979 as '' 8-bit Roman Extension''.[
The original 1983/1984 version of ''Roman-8'' still had some code points undefined.][ In a 1985 revision code points 177 ( Ý), 178 ( ý), 242 ( ·), 243 ( µ), 244 ( ¶) and 245 ( ¾) were added and the appearance of code point 228 was changed from a stroked d ( đ) to an eth ( ð).][ This final revision of the character set was also standardized as codepage 1051 by IBM in 1989.][
In contrast to the newer HP Roman-9, HP Roman-8 does not provide a code point for the euro sign.
The following table shows the latest 1985 definition of the HP Roman-8 character set (with some remarks regarding former definitions and alternative interpretations). Each character is shown with a potential ]Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
equivalent and its decimal code, however, sources differ in the recommended translations for some of the codes even among definitions from Hewlett-Packard[ and IBM.][
]
Names
This character set has over the years acquired a number of different names, such as:
*HP Roman-8: derived from the PCL specification.
*hp-roman8: the IETF/IANA name; many others have followed suit.
Since IANA character set identifiers aren't case-sensitive,[ the above can also be written as HP-Roman8.
*Roman 8][
*HP_ROMAN8]
*ROMAN8[
*HP Roman
*roman8][
*Code page 1051][ and hence CP1051][ or IBM-1051.][https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/blame/773345e418e012ed31499def440b89cb7ef5c188/icu4c/data/ibm-1051.ucm]
This file has remained essentially unchanged since it was imported fro
cdctables.zip
in 1995; only a few flags have been changed:
In July 2000
some characters were marked as mapping only from Unicode, but not back:
` \xA9 # SD130100 → ` \xA9 # SD130100 , 1
£ \xAF # SC020001 → £ \xAF # SC020001 , 1
▒ \x7F # SF150000 → ▒ \x7F # SF150000 , 1
Fullwidth ! \x21 # SP020000 → Fullwidth ! \x21 # SP020000 , 1
Fullwidth " \x22 # SP040000 → Fullwidth " \x22 # SP040000 , 1
...
Fullwidth } \x7D # SM140000 → Fullwidth } \x7D # SM140000 , 1
Fullwidth ~ \x7E # SD190000 → Fullwidth ~ \x7E # SD190000 , 1
Fullwidth ■ \xFC # SM470000 → Fullwidth ■ \xFC # SM470000 , 1
These are all cases where multiple characters map to the same byte.
In November 2000
some characters were marked as mapping only to Unicode, but not back:
- \xF6 , 0 → - \xF6 , 3
` \xA9 , 1 → ` \xA9 , 3
£ \xAF , 1 → £ \xAF , 3
These are all cases where multiple bytes map to the same character.[http://otadocs.opentext.com/documentation/Manuals11SP1/working-with-multiple-locales.pdf ][
]
Modified Roman-8
In 1984, Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP 110
The Hewlett-Packard HP 110 (aka HP Portable and HP 45710A) is an MS-DOS compatible portable computer released in 1984. It uses a Harris 80C86 running at 5.33 MHz with of RAM. It has an 80 character by 16 line monochrome () l ...
/ HP Portable
The Hewlett-Packard HP 110 (aka HP Portable and HP 45710A) is an MS-DOS compatible portable computer released in 1984. It uses a Harris 80C86 running at 5.33 MHz with of RAM. It has an 80 character by 16 line monochrome () l ...
personal computer followed by the HP 110 Plus
The Hewlett-Packard HP 110 (aka HP Portable and HP 45710A) is an MS-DOS compatible portable computer released in 1984. It uses a Harris 80C86 running at 5.33 MHz with of RAM. It has an 80 character by 16 line monochrome () l ...
/ HP Portable Plus
The Hewlett-Packard HP 110 (aka HP Portable and HP 45710A) is an MS-DOS compatible portable computer released in 1984. It uses a Harris 80C86 running at 5.33 MHz with of RAM. It has an 80 character by 16 line monochrome () l ...
in 1985. In "HP mode" they supported a derivation of the 1984 revision of 8-bit HP Roman-8
In computing HP Roman is a family of character sets consisting of HP Roman Extension, HP Roman-8, HP Roman-9 and several variants. Originally introduced by Hewlett-Packard around 1978, revisions and adaptations were published several times up ...
(still lacking the six additional characters at code points 177 to 178 and 242 to 245, and with code point 228 still resembling a stroked d ( đ)), but with 32 additional graphical symbols at code points 128 to 159, including a rich set of box-drawing character
Box-drawing characters, also known as line-drawing characters, are a form of semigraphics widely used in text user interfaces to draw various geometric frames and boxes. Box-drawing characters typically only work well with monospaced fonts. ...
s.
In 1986, Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP-18C
The HP-18C was a Hewlett-Packard business calculator which was quickly followed by the very similar but greatly improved HP-19B. The HP-18C was HP's first RPL-based calculator internally, even though this was not visible on user-level in this n ...
calculator and HP 82240A thermo printer, which internally used an extended variant of the 1985 revision of the 8-bit HP Roman-8
In computing HP Roman is a family of character sets consisting of HP Roman Extension, HP Roman-8, HP Roman-9 and several variants. Originally introduced by Hewlett-Packard around 1978, revisions and adaptations were published several times up ...
character set (now with the six additional characters defined and with code point 228 already changed to an eth ( ð)), but with the code points 127 (0x7F) and 160 (0xA0) as well as the control codes in the range 128 to 159 (0x80 to 0x9F) being replaced by additional displayable characters,
some of which were derived from the HP-41C/ CV/ CX's FOCAL character set and others incorporated into the revised FOCAL character set used by the HP-42S
The HP-42S RPN Scientific is a programmable RPN Scientific hand held calculator introduced by Hewlett Packard in 1988. It has advanced functions suitable for applications in mathematics, linear algebra, statistical analysis, computer science and ...
calculator, although at different code points. On the HP-28 series, characters above 147 (0x93) could not be displayed on the calculator, only be printed.
There is no official code point definition for the euro sign in this modified character set. The HP 49/50 series
The HP 49/50 series are Hewlett-Packard (HP) manufactured graphing calculators. They are the successors of the popular HP 48 series.
There are five calculators in the 49/50 series of HP graphing calculators. These calculators have both ...
of calculators use a different character set based on ECMA-94
ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint ISO and IEC series of standards for 8-bit character encodings. The series of standards consists of numbered parts, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1, ISO/IEC 8859-2, etc. There are 15 parts, excluding the abandoned ISO/IEC 8859-12. ...
/ ISO 8859-1 which includes the euro symbol.
Roman-9
HP Roman-9 (also known as HP Roman 9, hp-roman9, roman9 or R9) is a slight modification of the 8-bit HP Roman-8
In computing HP Roman is a family of character sets consisting of HP Roman Extension, HP Roman-8, HP Roman-9 and several variants. Originally introduced by Hewlett-Packard around 1978, revisions and adaptations were published several times up ...
character set where the general currency sign ( ¤) at code point 186 (0xBA) was replaced by the euro sign (€
The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists ...
). It was introduced in early 1999. As of 2017, HP Roman-9 still has no known code page number assigned to it.
See also
*RPL character set The RPL character set is an 8-bit character set and encoding used by most RPL calculators manufactured by Hewlett-Packard as well as by the HP 82240B thermo printer. It is sometimes referred to simply as "ECMA-94" in documentation, although ...
* Hewlett-Packard calculator character sets
*Western Latin character sets (computing)
Several binary representations of 8-bit character sets for common Western European languages are compared in this article. These encodings were designed for representation of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Dutch, English, Danish, ...
References
External links
*
{{character encoding
Character sets