Code Page - The Code Page Numbering System

The Code Page Numbering System

IBM introduced the concept of systematically assigning a small, but globally unique, 16 bit number to each character encoding that a computer system or collection of computer systems might encounter. The IBM origin of the numbering scheme is reflected in the fact that the smallest (first) numbers are assigned to variations of IBM's EBCDIC encoding and slightly larger numbers refer to variations of IBM's extended ASCII encoding as used in its PC hardware.

With the release of PC-DOS version 3.3 (and the near identical MS-DOS 3.3) IBM introduced the code page numbering system to regular PC users, as the code page numbers (and the phrase "code page") were used in new commands to allow the character encoding used by all parts of the OS to be set in a systematic way.

After IBM and Microsoft ceased to cooperate in the 1990s, the two companies have maintained the list of assigned code page numbers independently from each other, resulting in some conflicting assignments. At least one 3rd party vendor (Oracle) also has its own different list of numeric assignments. IBM's current assignments are listed in their CCSID repository. Microsoft's assignments seem not to be documented anywhere, but a list of the names and approximate IANA abbreviations for the installed code pages on any given Windows machine can be found in the Registry on that machine (this information is used by Microsoft programs such as Internet Explorer).

Most well-known code pages, excluding those for the CJK languages and Vietnamese, fit all their code-points into 8 bits and do not involve anything more than mapping each code-point to a single character; furthermore, techniques such as combining characters, complex scripts, etc., are not involved.

The text mode of standard (VGA-compatible) PC graphics hardware is built around using an 8-bit code page, though it is possible to use two at once with some color depth sacrifice, and up to 8 may be stored in the display adaptor for easy switching. There were a selection of 3rd party code page fonts that could be loaded into such hardware. However, it is now commonplace for operating system vendors to provide their own character encoding and rendering systems that run in a graphics mode and bypass this hardware limitation entirely. However the system of referring to character encodings by a code page number remains applicable, as an efficient alternative to string identifiers such as those specified by the IETF and IANA for use in various protocols such as e-mail and web pages.