Windows-1256 is 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 characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some co ...
used under
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
to write
Arabic and other languages that use
Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
, such as
Persian and
Urdu.
This code page is ''neither'' compatible with
ISO-8859-6 nor the
MacArabic encoding.
Windows-1256 encodes every ''abstract'' single letter of the basic Arabic alphabet, not every concrete visual form of isolated, initial, medial, final or ligatured letter shape variants (i.e. it encodes characters, not glyphs). The Arabic letters in the C0-FF range are in Arabic alphabetic order, but some Latin characters are interspersed among them. These are some
Windows-1252 Latin characters used for
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, since this European language has some historic relevance in former French colonies in North Africa such as
Morocco and
Algeria. This allowed French and Arabic text to be intermixed when using Windows 1256 without any need for code-page switching (however, upper-case letters with diacritics were not included).
IBM uses code page 1256 (
CCSID 1256,
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 ...
extended CCSID 5352, and the further extended CCSID 9448) for Windows-1256.
Unicode is preferred over Windows 1256 in modern applications, especially on the Internet, where the dominant
UTF-8 encoding is most used for web pages, including for Arabic (see also
Arabic script in Unicode, for complete coverage, unlike for e.g. Windows 1256 or
ISO-8859-6 that do not cover extras). Less than 0.03% of all web pages use Windows-1256 in October 2022, and while that encoding is mostly used for Arabic, and second-most popular for it, it's only used for 1.6% of the Arabic text on the web.
Character set
Since the original
code page
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 ...
left 9 values (bytes) marked as "NOT USED" in the original specification,
these bytes were used later for additional characters needed for the
Perso-Arabic script (for the
Persian and
Urdu languages), plus 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 ...
.
The following table shows the extended version of Windows-1256. Each character is shown with its
Unicode equivalent and its decimal code.
Here every Arabic letter is shown in isolated form. The actual forms of the letters inside Arabic words are rendered by a combination of software rules and appropriate font support.
See also
*
LMBCS-4
The Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set (LMBCS) is a proprietary multi-byte character encoding originally conceived in 1988 at Lotus Development Corporation with input from Bob Balaban and others. Created around the same time and addressing some of the ...
References
External links
Windows 1256 reference chartIANA Charset Name Registration of windows-1256
{{character encoding
Windows code pages