The Kamenický encoding (), named for the brothers Jiří and Marian Kamenický, was a

code page In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable character (computing), characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a s ...

for

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

s running

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

, very popular in

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

(since 1993, the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

and

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

) around 1985–1995. Another name for this encoding is KEYBCS2, the name of the

terminate-and-stay-resident A terminate-and-stay-resident program (commonly TSR) is a computer program running under DOS that uses a system call to return control to DOS as though it has finished, but remains in computer memory so it can be reactivated later. This technique ...

utility which implemented the matching keyboard driver. It was also named KAMENICKY. It was based on the

code page 437 Code page 437 ( CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or MS-DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (di ...

encoding (with accented characters for Western-European languages) where most of the characters from code points 128 to 173 were replaced by

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

and Slovak characters chosen so that the

glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...

s of the replacement characters resembled those of the original as closely as possible, e. g. č in the place of ç. This ensured that text in the Kamenický encoding was (barely) readable even on older or cheap computers with the original fonts (which were often in videocard

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

, making modification difficult if not impossible). A supplemental feature was that the block graphic and

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. These characters are characterized by being designed to be connected horiz ...

s of code page 437 remained unchanged (

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

's official Central-European code page 852 did not have this property, making programs like

Norton Commander Norton Commander (NC) is a discontinued prototypical orthodox file manager (OFM), written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing (later acquired in 1990 by the NortonLifeLock, Symantec corporation). NC provides a text-based user i ...

look funny with corners and joints of border lines broken by accented letters). The widespread use of the Kamenický encoding was undermined neither by IBM's code page 852, nor by the

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series run as a shell on top of MS-DOS; it was the last Windows 1 ...

introducing ''Microsoft Central Europe'' code page 1250. Only with

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

and the spreading deployment of

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

did users begin to use code page 1250, which in turn is now obsoleted by

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

. Some ambiguity exists in the official code page assignment for the Kamenický encoding: Some dot matrix printers of the NEC Pinwriter series, namely the ''P3200''/''P3300'' (''P20''/''P30''), ''P6200''/''P6300'' (''P60''/''P70''), ''P9300'' (''P90''), ''P7200''/''P7300'' (''P62''/''P72''), ''P22Q''/''P32Q'', ''P3800''/''P3900'' (''P42Q''/''P52Q''), ''P1200''/''P1300'' (''P2Q''/''P3Q''), ''P2000'' (''P2X'') and ''P8000'' (''P72X''), supported the installation of optional font

EPROM An EPROM (rarely EROM), or erasable programmable read-only memory, is a type of programmable read-only memory (PROM) integrated circuit, chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. Computer memory that can retrieve stored d ...

s. The optional ROM #2 "East Europe" included this encoding, invokable via

escape sequence In computer science, an escape sequence is a combination of characters that has a meaning other than the literal characters contained therein; it is marked by one or more preceding (and possibly terminating) characters. Examples * In C and ma ...

ESC R (n) with (n) = 23. While named "Kamenický" in the documentation, it was originally advertised by NEC as code page 867 (CP867) or "Czech". (However, it was never registered with

under that ID, as IBM registered another unrelated code page ''Israel: Hebrew'', based on CP862, under that ID in 1998.) The Fujitsu ''DL6400 (Pro)'' / ''DL6600 (Pro)'' printers support the Kamenický encoding as well. The encoding was also sometimes called code page 895 (CP895), for example with

FoxPro FoxPro is a text-based (computing), text-based Procedural programming, procedurally oriented programming language and database management system (DBMS), and it is also an object-oriented programming language, originally published by Fox Softwar ...

, in the

WordPerfect WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, disp ...

text processor and under the

Arachne Arachne (; from , cognate with Latin ) is the protagonist of a tale in classical mythology known primarily from the version told by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE). In Book Six of his epic poem ''Metamorphoses'', Ovid recounts how ...

web browser for DOS, but IBM uses this code page number for a different encoding, ''CM/Group 2: 7-bit Latin SBCS: Japanese (EUC-JP JIS-Roman)'' or ''Japan 7-Bit Latin (00895)'', and the

IANA The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Internet P ...

does not recognize the number at all. The DOS code page switching file NECPINW.CPI for NEC Pinwriters supported the Kamenický encoding under both, code page 867 and 895 as well. This encoding is known as code page 3844 in Star printers.

Character set

Each character is shown with its equivalent

code point. Only the second half of the table (code points 128–255) is shown, the first half (code points 0–127) being the same as

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kamenicky Encoding DOS code pages

Character set

See also

References