The Kamenický encoding ( cs, kódování Kamenických), 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 characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some c ...

for

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tech ...

s running DOS, very popular in

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

(since 1993, the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. Th ...

and

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), 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 ...

) 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 DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (diac ...

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

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, 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. Box-drawing characters typically only work well with monospaced fonts. ...

s of code page 437 remained unchanged ( IBM'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 introducing ''Microsoft Central Europe'' code page 1250. Only with

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufactu ...

and the spreading deployment of

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a ma ...

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

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, ...

. 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) chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. Computer memory that can retrieve stored data after a power ...

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 IBM under that ID, as IBM registered another unrelated code page ''Israel: Hebrew'', based on CP862, under that ID in 1998.) The

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...

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

, in the WordPerfect text processor and under the

Arachne Arachne (; from , cognate with Latin ) is the protagonist of a tale in Greek mythology known primarily from the version told by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE), which is the earliest extant source for the story. In Book Six of his ...

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 Interne ...

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