Code page 437

Code page 437
	Code page 437, as rendered by an IBM PC using standard VGA
MIME / IANA	IBM437
Alias(es)	cp437, 437, csPC8CodePage437,[1] OEM-US
Language(s)	English
Classification	Extended ASCII, OEM code page
Extends	US-ASCII
Other related encoding(s)	Code page 850, CWI-2

Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer).[2] It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437,[3] PC-8,[4] or DOS Latin US.[5] The set includes all printable ASCII characters, extended codes for accented letters (diacritics), some Greek letters, icons, and line-drawing symbols. It is sometimes referred to as the "OEM font" or "high ASCII", or as "extended ASCII"[4] (one of many mutually incompatible ASCII extensions).

This character set remains the primary set in the core of any EGA and VGA-compatible graphics card. Text shown when a PC reboots, before any other font can be loaded from a storage medium, typically is rendered in this character set.[note 1] Many file formats developed at the time of the IBM PC are based on code page 437 as well.

Display adapters

The original IBM PC contained this font as a 9×14 pixels-per-character font stored in the ROM of the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) and an 8×8 pixels-per-character font of the Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) cards. The IBM Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) contained an 8×14 pixels-per-character version, and the VGA contained a 9×16 version.

All these display adapters have text modes in which each character cell contains an 8-bit character code point (see details), giving 256 possible values for graphic characters. All 256 codes were assigned a graphical character in ROM, including the codes from 0 to 31 that were reserved in ASCII for non-graphical control characters.

Various Eastern European PCs used different character sets, sometimes user-selectable via jumpers or CMOS setup. These sets were designed to match 437 as much as possible, for instance sharing the code points for many of the line-drawing characters, while still allowing text in a local language to be displayed.

Alt codes

A legacy of code page 437 is the number combinations used in Windows Alt keycodes.[6][7][8] The user could enter a character by holding down the Alt key and entering the three-digit decimal Alt keycode on the numpad[6] and many users memorized the numbers needed for CP437 (or for the similar code page 850). When Microsoft switched to their proprietary character sets (such as CP1252) and later Unicode in Windows, the original codes were retained; Microsoft added the ability to type a code in the new character set by typing the numpad 0 before the digits.[6][9]

Character set

The following tables show code page 437. Each character is shown with its equivalent Unicode code point and its decimal Alt code. See also the notes below, as there are multiple equivalent Unicode characters for some code points.

Although the ROM provides a graphic for all 256 different possible 8-bit codes, some APIs will not print some code points, in particular the range 0-31 and the code at 127.[10] Instead, they will interpret them as control characters. For instance, many methods of outputting text on the original IBM PC would interpret the codes for BEL, BS, CR and LF. Many printers were also unable to print these characters.

Code page 437[11][12][13][14]
	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
0_	NUL[lower-alpha 1] 0000 0	☺ 263A 1	☻ 263B 2	♥ 2665 3	♦ 2666 4	♣ 2663 5	♠ 2660 6	• 2022 7	◘ 25D8 8	○ 25CB 9	◙ 25D9 10	♂ 2642 11	♀ 2640 12	♪ 266A 13	♫ 266B 14	☼ 263C 15
1_	► 25BA 16	◄ 25C4 17	↕ 2195 18	‼ 203C 19	¶ 00B6 20	§ 00A7 21	▬ 25AC 22	↨ 21A8 23	↑ 2191 24	↓ 2193 25	→ 2192 26	← 2190 27	∟ 221F 28	↔ 2194 29	▲ 25B2 30	▼ 25BC 31
2_	SP 0020 32	! 0021 33	" 0022 34	# 0023 35	$ 0024 36	% 0025 37	& 0026 38	' 0027 39	( 0028 40	) 0029 41	* 002A 42	+ 002B 43	, 002C 44	- 002D 45	. 002E 46	/ 002F 47
3_	0 0030 48	1 0031 49	2 0032 50	3 0033 51	4 0034 52	5 0035 53	6 0036 54	7 0037 55	8 0038 56	9 0039 57	: 003A 58	; 003B 59	< 003C 60	= 003D 61	> 003E 62	? 003F 63
4_	@ 0040 64	A 0041 65	B 0042 66	C 0043 67	D 0044 68	E 0045 69	F 0046 70	G 0047 71	H 0048 72	I 0049 73	J 004A 74	K 004B 75	L 004C 76	M 004D 77	N 004E 78	O 004F 79
5_	P 0050 80	Q 0051 81	R 0052 82	S 0053 83	T 0054 84	U 0055 85	V 0056 86	W 0057 87	X 0058 88	Y 0059 89	Z 005A 90	[ 005B 91	\ 005C 92	] 005D 93	^ 005E 94	_ 005F 95
6_	` 0060 96	a 0061 97	b 0062 98	c 0063 99	d 0064 100	e 0065 101	f 0066 102	g 0067 103	h 0068 104	i 0069 105	j 006A 106	k 006B 107	l 006C 108	m 006D 109	n 006E 110	o 006F 111
7_	p 0070 112	q 0071 113	r 0072 114	s 0073 115	t 0074 116	u 0075 117	v 0076 118	w 0077 119	x 0078 120	y 0079 121	z 007A 122	{ 007B 123	\|[lower-alpha 2] 007C 124	} 007D 125	~ 007E 126	⌂[lower-alpha 3] 2302 127
8_	Ç 00C7 128	ü 00FC 129	é 00E9 130	â 00E2 131	ä 00E4 132	à 00E0 133	å 00E5 134	ç 00E7 135	ê 00EA 136	ë 00EB 137	è 00E8 138	ï 00EF 139	î 00EE 140	ì 00EC 141	Ä 00C4 142	Å 00C5 143
9_	É 00C9 144	æ 00E6 145	Æ 00C6 146	ô 00F4 147	ö 00F6 148	ò 00F2 149	û 00FB 150	ù 00F9 151	ÿ 00FF 152	Ö 00D6 153	Ü 00DC 154	¢ 00A2 155	£ 00A3 156	¥ 00A5 157	₧ 20A7 158	ƒ 0192 159
A_	á 00E1 160	í 00ED 161	ó 00F3 162	ú 00FA 163	ñ 00F1 164	Ñ 00D1 165	ª 00AA 166	º 00BA 167	¿ 00BF 168	⌐ 2310 169	¬ 00AC 170	½ 00BD 171	¼ 00BC 172	¡ 00A1 173	« 00AB 174	» 00BB 175
B_	░ 2591 176	▒ 2592 177	▓ 2593 178	│[lower-alpha 4] 2502 179	┤ 2524 180	╡ 2561 181	╢ 2562 182	╖ 2556 183	╕ 2555 184	╣ 2563 185	║ 2551 186	╗ 2557 187	╝ 255D 188	╜ 255C 189	╛ 255B 190	┐ 2510 191
C_	└ 2514 192	┴ 2534 193	┬ 252C 194	├ 251C 195	─ 2500 196	┼ 253C 197	╞ 255E 198	╟ 255F 199	╚ 255A 200	╔ 2554 201	╩ 2569 202	╦ 2566 203	╠ 2560 204	═ 2550 205	╬ 256C 206	╧ 2567 207
D_	╨ 2568 208	╤ 2564 209	╥ 2565 210	╙ 2559 211	╘ 2558 212	╒ 2552 213	╓ 2553 214	╫ 256B 215	╪ 256A 216	┘ 2518 217	┌ 250C 218	█ 2588 219	▄ 2584 220	▌ 258C 221	▐ 2590 222	▀ 2580 223
E_	α 03B1 224	ß[lower-alpha 5] 00DF 225	Γ 0393 226	π[lower-alpha 6] 03C0 227	Σ[lower-alpha 7] 03A3 228	σ 03C3 229	µ[lower-alpha 8] 00B5 230	τ 03C4 231	Φ 03A6 232	Θ 0398 233	Ω[lower-alpha 9] 03A9 234	δ[lower-alpha 10] 03B4 235	∞ 221E 236	φ[lower-alpha 11] 03C6 237	ε[lower-alpha 12] 03B5 238	∩ 2229 239
F_	≡ 2261 240	± 00B1 241	≥ 2265 242	≤ 2264 243	⌠[lower-alpha 13] 2320 244	⌡ 2321 245	÷ 00F7 246	≈ 2248 247	° 00B0 248	∙[lower-alpha 14] 2219 249	· 00B7 250	√[lower-alpha 15] 221A 251	ⁿ 207F 252	² 00B2 253	■ 25A0 254	nbsp[lower-alpha 16] 00A0 255

Letter Number Punctuation Symbol Other Undefined

Comparison of characters in the E0 to EF range across various IBM products.

When translating to Unicode some codes do not have a unique, single Unicode equivalent; the correct choice may depend upon context.

0 draws a blank space, but usage as the C string terminator means it is more accurately translated as NUL
124 (7C_hex) The actual glyph at this position is a broken bar [U+00A6, ¦] in the original IBM PC and compatibles font as rendered by the original MDA and this rendering was later adopted for CGA, EGA and VGA (see image at the beginning of the article) but almost all software assumes this code is the ASCII character (for instance programming languages use it as "or") and in the early 1990s it was clarified that there is vertical bar in ASCII at this position and the broken bar symbol is not part of ASCII.
127 (7F_hex) is a "house" but was also sometimes used as Greek capital delta [U+0394, Δ].
Could also serve as an integral extension [U+23AE, ⎮] in IBM's font.
225 (E1_hex) is identified by IBM as Latin "Sharp s Small"[15] [U+00DF, ß] but is sometimes rendered in OEM fonts as Greek small beta [U+03B2, β]. The placement of this Latin character among Greek characters suggests intended multi-use.
227 (E3_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Pi Small" [U+03C0, π] but is sometimes rendered in OEM fonts as Greek capital pi [U+03A0, Π] or the n-ary product sign [U+220F, ∏].
228 (E4_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Sigma Capital" [U+03A3, Σ] but is also used as the n-ary summation sign [U+2211, ∑].
230 (E6_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Mu Small" [U+03BC, μ] but is also used as the micro sign [U+00B5, µ]. In Unicode, IBM's Greek GCGID table[16] maps the character in this code page to the Greek letter, but Python, for example, maps it to the micro sign.
234 (EA_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Omega Capital" [U+03A9, Ω] but is also used as the ohm sign [U+2126, Ω]. Unicode considers the characters to be equivalent and suggests that U+03A9 be used in both contexts.[17]
235 (EB_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Delta Small" [U+03B4, δ]. It was also unofficially used for the small eth [U+00F0, ð] and the partial derivative sign [U+2202, ∂]
237 (ED_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Phi Small (Closed Form)" [U+03D5, ϕ; or, from the italicized math set, U+1D719, 𝜙] but, in some codecs (e.g. the codec library of Python[18]), is mapped to Unicode as the open (or "loopy") form [U+03C6, φ]. Comparison of IBM's Greek GCGID table[16] with Unicode's Greek code chart[19] shows where IBM, for example, reversed the open and closed forms when mapping to Unicode. This character is also used as the empty set sign [U+2205, ∅], the diameter sign [U+2300, ⌀], and the Latin letter O with stroke [U+00D8, Ø; and U+00F8, ø].
238 (EE_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Epsilon Small" [U+03B5, ε] but is sometimes rendered in OEM fonts as the element-of sign [U+2208, ∈]. It was later unofficially used as the euro sign [U+20AC, €]
244 (F4_hex) and 245 (F5_hex) are the upper and lower portion of the integral symbol (∫), and they can be extended with the character 179 (B3_hex), the vertical line of the box drawing block. 244 could also be used for the long s character [U+017F, ſ].
249 (F9_hex) and 250 (FA_hex) are almost indistinguishable: the first is a slightly larger dot than the second, both were used as bullets, middle dot, and multiplication dot [U+2219, ∙]
251 (FB_hex) was also sometimes used as a check mark [U+2713, ✓].
255 (FF_hex) draws a blank space, the use as non-breaking space (NBSP) has precedent in word processors designed for the IBM PC.

History

The repertoire of code page 437 was taken from the character set of Wang word-processing machines, according to Bill Gates in an interview with Gates and Paul Allen that appeared in the 2 October 1995 edition of Fortune Magazine:

"... We were also fascinated by dedicated word processors from Wang, because we believed that general-purpose machines could do that just as well. That's why, when it came time to design the keyboard for the IBM PC, we put the funny Wang character set into the machine—you know, smiley faces and boxes and triangles and stuff. We were thinking we'd like to do a clone of Wang word-processing software someday."

According to an interview with David J. Bradley (developer of the PC's ROM-BIOS) the characters were decided upon during a four-hour meeting on a plane trip from Seattle to Atlanta by Andy Saenz (responsible for the video card), Lew Eggebrecht (chief engineer for the PC) and himself.[20]

The selection of graphic characters has some internal logic:

Table rows 0 and 1, codes 0 to 31 (00_hex to 1F_hex), are assorted dingbats (complementary and decorative characters). The isolated character 127 (7F_hex) also belongs to this group.
Table rows 2 to 7, codes 32 to 126 (20_hex to 7E_hex), are the standard ASCII printable characters.
Table rows 8 to 10, codes 128 to 175 (80_hex to AF_hex), are a selection of international text characters.
Table rows 11 to 13, codes 176 to 223 (B0_hex to DF_hex), are box drawing and block characters. This block is arranged so that characters 192 to 223 (C0_hex to DF_hex) contain all the right arms and right-filled areas. The original IBM PC MDA display adapter stored the code page 437 character glyphs as bitmaps eight pixels wide, but for visual enhancement displayed them every nine pixels on screen. This range of characters had the eighth pixel column duplicated by special hardware circuitry,[21] thus filling in gaps in lines and filled areas. The VGA adapter allows this behaviour to be turned on or off.[22]
Table rows 14 and 15, codes 224 to 254 (E0_hex to FE_hex) are devoted to mathematical symbols, where the first twelve are a selection of Greek letters commonly used in physics.

Most fonts for Microsoft Windows include the special graphic characters at the Unicode indexes shown, as they are part of the WGL4 set that Microsoft encourages font designers to support. (The monospaced raster font family Terminal was an early font that replicated all code page 437 characters, at least at some resolutions.) To draw these characters directly from these code points, a Microsoft Windows font called MS Linedraw[23] replicates all of the code page 437 characters, thus providing one way to display DOS text on a modern Windows machine as it was shown in DOS, with limitations.[24]

Internationalization

Code page 437 has a series of international characters, mainly values 128 to 175 (80_hex to AF_hex). However, it only covers a few major Western European languages in full, including English, German and Swedish,[note 2] and so lacks several characters (mostly capital letters) important to many major Western European languages:

Spanish: Á, Í, Ó, and Ú
French: À, Â, È, Ê, Ë, Î, Ï, Ô, Œ, œ, Ù, Û, and Ÿ
Portuguese: Á, À, Â, Ã, ã, Ê, Í, Ó, Ô, Õ, õ, and Ú
Catalan: À, È, Í, Ï, Ò, Ó, and Ú
Italian: À, È, Ì, Ò, and Ù
Icelandic: Á, Ð, ð, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý, ý, Þ, and þ
Danish/Norwegian: Ø and ø. Character number 237 (ED_hex), the small phi (closed form), could be used as a surrogate even though it may not render well (furthermore, it tends to map to Unicode, and/or render in Unicode fonts, as the open-form phi or the closed-vertical-form phi, which are even further from the O with stroke). To compensate, the Danish/Norwegian and Icelandic code pages (865 and 861) replaced cent sign (¢) with ø and the yen sign (¥) with Ø.
Most Greek alphabet symbols were omitted, beyond the basic math symbols. (They were included in the Greek-language code pages 737 and 869. Some of the Greek symbols that were already in code page 437 had their glyphs changed from mathematical or scientific forms to match the actual use in Greek.)

Along with the cent (¢), pound sterling (£) and yen/yuan (¥) currency symbols, it has a couple of former European currency symbols: the florin (ƒ, Netherlands) and the peseta (₧, Spain). The presence of the last is unusual, since the Spanish peseta was never an internationally relevant currency, and also never had a symbol of its own; it was simply abbreviated as "Pt", "Pta", "Pts", or "Ptas". Spanish models of the IBM electric typewriter, however, also had a single position devoted to it.

Later DOS character sets, such as code page 850 (DOS Latin-1), code page 852 (DOS Central-European) and code page 737 (DOS Greek), filled the gaps for international use with some compatibility with code page 437 by retaining the single and double box-drawing characters, while discarding the mixed ones (e.g. horizontal double/vertical single). All code page 437 characters have similar glyphs in Unicode and in Microsoft's WGL4 character set, and therefore are available in most fonts in Microsoft Windows, and also in the default VGA font of the Linux kernel, and the ISO 10646 fonts for X11.

Notes

Systems available in Eastern European, Arabic, and Asian countries often use a different set, however these sets are designed to match 437 as much as possible. The designation "OEM", for "original equipment manufacturer", indicates that the set could be changed by the manufacturer to meet different markets.
It also covers some less major Western European languages—as well as some other languages—in full, including Basque, Malay, and the pre-1999 Turkmen Latin alphabet, but this was likely unintended.

References

Character Sets, Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), 12 December 2018
"CCSID 437 information document". Archived from the original on 27 March 2016.
"OEM 437". Go Global Developer Center. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 22 September 2011.
"OEM font". Encyclopedia. PCmag.com. Retrieved 15 November 2011.
Kano, Nadine. "Appendix H Code Pages". Globalization and Localization : Code Page 437 DOS Latin US. Developing International Software. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 17 March 2016. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
"Glossary of Terms Used on this Site". Microsoft. (Please see the description about the term "Alt+Numpad"). Archived from the original on 8 September 2012. Retrieved 17 August 2018.
Murray Sargent. "Entering Unicode Characters – Murray Sargent: Math in Office". Retrieved 17 August 2018.
"ALT+NUMPAD ASCII Key Combos: The α and Ω of Creating Obscure Passwords". Retrieved 17 August 2018.
"Insert ASCII or Unicode Latin-based symbols and characters - Office Support". Microsoft. Retrieved 17 August 2018.
"SBCS code page information document CPGID 00437". Coded character sets and related resources. IBM. 1986 [1984-05-01]. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
Steele, Shawn (24 April 1996). "cp437_DOSLatinUS to Unicode table" (TXT). 2.00. Unicode Consortium. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
Code Page CPGID 00437 (pdf) (PDF), IBM
Code Page CPGID 00437 (txt), IBM
International Components for Unicode (ICU), ibm-437_P100-1995.ucm, 3 December 2002
"Code Page (CPGID): 00437". Coded character sets and related resources. IBM. 1984. Retrieved 25 February 2017.
"Graphic character identifiers: Alphabetics, Greek". Coded character sets and related resources. IBM. Retrieved 25 February 2017.
The Unicode Consortium (21 May 2003). "Chapter 7: European Alphabetic Scripts". The Unicode Standard 4.0 (PDF). Addison-Wesley (published August 2003). p. 176. ISBN 0-321-18578-1. Retrieved 9 June 2016.
"cpython/cp437.py at master · python/cpython · GitHub". Retrieved 17 August 2018.
"Greek and Coptic: Range: 0370–03FF" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 9.0. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 25 February 2017.
Edwards, Benj (6 November 2015) [2011]. "Origins of the ASCII Smiley Character: An Email Exchange With Dr. David Bradley". Archived from the original on 28 November 2016. Retrieved 27 November 2016. […] If you look at the first 32 characters in the IBM PC character set you'll see lots of whimsical characters — smiley face, musical notes, playing card suits and others. These were intended for character based games […] Since we were using 8-bit characters we had 128 new spots to fill. We put serious characters there — three columns of foreign characters, based on our Datamaster experience. Three columns of block graphic characters […] many customers with Monochrome Display Adapter would have no graphics at all. […] two columns had math symbols, greek letters (for math) and others […] about the first 32 characters (x00-x1F)? […] These characters originated with teletype transmission. But we could display them on the character based screens. So we added a set of "not serious" characters. They were intended as display only characters, not for transmission or storage. Their most probable use would be in character based games. […] As in most things for the IBM PC, the one year development schedule left little time for contemplation and revision. […] the character set was developed in a three person 4-hour meeting, and I was one of those on that plane from Seattle to Atlanta. There was some minor revision after that meeting, but there were many other things to design/fix/decide so that was about it. […] the other participants in that plane trip were Andy Saenz — responsible for the video card, and Lew Eggebrecht — the chief engineer for the PC.
Wilton, Richard (December 1987). Programmer's Guide to PC & PS/2 Video Systems: Maximum Video Performance Form the EGA, VGA, HGC, and MCGA (1st ed.). Microsoft Press. ISBN 1-55615-103-9. ISBN 978-1-55615-103-3.
Joshua D. Neal, Attribute Controller Registers: Attribute Mode Control Register, Hardware Level VGA and SVGA Video Programming Information Page: bit 2 is Line Graphics Enable.
Mike Jacobs. "MS LineDraw font family - Typography | Microsoft Docs". Microsoft typography. 2.00. Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved 17 August 2018.
Staff (26 October 2013). "WD97: MS LineDraw Font Not Usable in Word". Microsoft. 2.0. Microsoft. KB179422, Q179422. Archived from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 1 July 2012.

External links

IBM PC memory-mapped video graphics to Unicode on official Unicode site

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[16] 0 draws a blank space, but usage as the C string terminator means it is more accurately translated as NUL

[17] 124 (7C_hex) The actual glyph at this position is a broken bar [U+00A6, ¦] in the original IBM PC and compatibles font as rendered by the original MDA and this rendering was later adopted for CGA, EGA and VGA (see image at the beginning of the article) but almost all software assumes this code is the ASCII character (for instance programming languages use it as "or") and in the early 1990s it was clarified that there is vertical bar in ASCII at this position and the broken bar symbol is not part of ASCII.

[18] 127 (7F_hex) is a "house" but was also sometimes used as Greek capital delta [U+0394, Δ].

[19] Could also serve as an integral extension [U+23AE, ⎮] in IBM's font.

[21] 225 (E1_hex) is identified by IBM as Latin "Sharp s Small"[15] [U+00DF, ß] but is sometimes rendered in OEM fonts as Greek small beta [U+03B2, β]. The placement of this Latin character among Greek characters suggests intended multi-use.

[22] 227 (E3_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Pi Small" [U+03C0, π] but is sometimes rendered in OEM fonts as Greek capital pi [U+03A0, Π] or the n-ary product sign [U+220F, ∏].

[23] 228 (E4_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Sigma Capital" [U+03A3, Σ] but is also used as the n-ary summation sign [U+2211, ∑].

[25] 230 (E6_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Mu Small" [U+03BC, μ] but is also used as the micro sign [U+00B5, µ]. In Unicode, IBM's Greek GCGID table[16] maps the character in this code page to the Greek letter, but Python, for example, maps it to the micro sign.

[27] 234 (EA_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Omega Capital" [U+03A9, Ω] but is also used as the ohm sign [U+2126, Ω]. Unicode considers the characters to be equivalent and suggests that U+03A9 be used in both contexts.[17]

[28] 235 (EB_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Delta Small" [U+03B4, δ]. It was also unofficially used for the small eth [U+00F0, ð] and the partial derivative sign [U+2202, ∂]

[31] 237 (ED_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Phi Small (Closed Form)" [U+03D5, ϕ; or, from the italicized math set, U+1D719, 𝜙] but, in some codecs (e.g. the codec library of Python[18]), is mapped to Unicode as the open (or "loopy") form [U+03C6, φ]. Comparison of IBM's Greek GCGID table[16] with Unicode's Greek code chart[19] shows where IBM, for example, reversed the open and closed forms when mapping to Unicode. This character is also used as the empty set sign [U+2205, ∅], the diameter sign [U+2300, ⌀], and the Latin letter O with stroke [U+00D8, Ø; and U+00F8, ø].

[32] 238 (EE_hex) is identified by IBM as Greek "Epsilon Small" [U+03B5, ε] but is sometimes rendered in OEM fonts as the element-of sign [U+2208, ∈]. It was later unofficially used as the euro sign [U+20AC, €]

[33] 244 (F4_hex) and 245 (F5_hex) are the upper and lower portion of the integral symbol (∫), and they can be extended with the character 179 (B3_hex), the vertical line of the box drawing block. 244 could also be used for the long s character [U+017F, ſ].

[34] 249 (F9_hex) and 250 (FA_hex) are almost indistinguishable: the first is a slightly larger dot than the second, both were used as bullets, middle dot, and multiplication dot [U+2219, ∙]

[35] 251 (FB_hex) was also sometimes used as a check mark [U+2713, ✓].

[36] 255 (FF_hex) draws a blank space, the use as non-breaking space (NBSP) has precedent in word processors designed for the IBM PC.

[6] Systems available in Eastern European, Arabic, and Asian countries often use a different set, however these sets are designed to match 437 as much as possible. The designation "OEM", for "original equipment manufacturer", indicates that the set could be changed by the manufacturer to meet different markets.

[42] It also covers some less major Western European languages—as well as some other languages—in full, including Basque, Malay, and the pre-1999 Turkmen Latin alphabet, but this was likely unintended.

[1] Character Sets, Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), 12 December 2018

[2] "CCSID 437 information document". Archived from the original on 27 March 2016.

[GGDC-3] "OEM 437". Go Global Developer Center. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 22 September 2011.

[PCMAG-4] "OEM font". Encyclopedia. PCmag.com. Retrieved 15 November 2011.

[DIS-5] Kano, Nadine. "Appendix H Code Pages". Globalization and Localization : Code Page 437 DOS Latin US. Developing International Software. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 17 March 2016. Retrieved 14 November 2011.

[Alt_and_Numpad-7] "Glossary of Terms Used on this Site". Microsoft. (Please see the description about the term "Alt+Numpad"). Archived from the original on 8 September 2012. Retrieved 17 August 2018.

[Entering_Unicode-8] Murray Sargent. "Entering Unicode Characters – Murray Sargent: Math in Office". Retrieved 17 August 2018.

[Alt_and_Numpad_2-9] "ALT+NUMPAD ASCII Key Combos: The α and Ω of Creating Obscure Passwords". Retrieved 17 August 2018.

[ASCII_Insertion_on_Word-10] "Insert ASCII or Unicode Latin-based symbols and characters - Office Support". Microsoft. Retrieved 17 August 2018.

[IBM_1986_437-11] "SBCS code page information document CPGID 00437". Coded character sets and related resources. IBM. 1986 [1984-05-01]. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 14 November 2011.

[Unicode_1996_437-12] Steele, Shawn (24 April 1996). "cp437_DOSLatinUS to Unicode table" (TXT). 2.00. Unicode Consortium. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 14 November 2011.

[cpgid437pdf-13] Code Page CPGID 00437 (pdf) (PDF), IBM

[cpgid437txt-14] Code Page CPGID 00437 (txt), IBM

[icu-15] International Components for Unicode (ICU), ibm-437_P100-1995.ucm, 3 December 2002

[CPGID_00437-20] "Code Page (CPGID): 00437". Coded character sets and related resources. IBM. 1984. Retrieved 25 February 2017.

[GCGID_Greek-24] "Graphic character identifiers: Alphabetics, Greek". Coded character sets and related resources. IBM. Retrieved 25 February 2017.

[Unicode_2003_40-26] The Unicode Consortium (21 May 2003). "Chapter 7: European Alphabetic Scripts". The Unicode Standard 4.0 (PDF). Addison-Wesley (published August 2003). p. 176. ISBN 0-321-18578-1. Retrieved 9 June 2016.

[Python_Codec-29] "cpython/cp437.py at master · python/cpython · GitHub". Retrieved 17 August 2018.

[Unicode_Greek-30] "Greek and Coptic: Range: 0370–03FF" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 9.0. Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 25 February 2017.

[Edwards_2015-37] Edwards, Benj (6 November 2015) [2011]. "Origins of the ASCII Smiley Character: An Email Exchange With Dr. David Bradley". Archived from the original on 28 November 2016. Retrieved 27 November 2016. […] If you look at the first 32 characters in the IBM PC character set you'll see lots of whimsical characters — smiley face, musical notes, playing card suits and others. These were intended for character based games […] Since we were using 8-bit characters we had 128 new spots to fill. We put serious characters there — three columns of foreign characters, based on our Datamaster experience. Three columns of block graphic characters […] many customers with Monochrome Display Adapter would have no graphics at all. […] two columns had math symbols, greek letters (for math) and others […] about the first 32 characters (x00-x1F)? […] These characters originated with teletype transmission. But we could display them on the character based screens. So we added a set of "not serious" characters. They were intended as display only characters, not for transmission or storage. Their most probable use would be in character based games. […] As in most things for the IBM PC, the one year development schedule left little time for contemplation and revision. […] the character set was developed in a three person 4-hour meeting, and I was one of those on that plane from Seattle to Atlanta. There was some minor revision after that meeting, but there were many other things to design/fix/decide so that was about it. […] the other participants in that plane trip were Andy Saenz — responsible for the video card, and Lew Eggebrecht — the chief engineer for the PC.

[Wilton_1987-38] Wilton, Richard (December 1987). Programmer's Guide to PC & PS/2 Video Systems: Maximum Video Performance Form the EGA, VGA, HGC, and MCGA (1st ed.). Microsoft Press. ISBN 1-55615-103-9. ISBN 978-1-55615-103-3.

[39] Joshua D. Neal, Attribute Controller Registers: Attribute Mode Control Register, Hardware Level VGA and SVGA Video Programming Information Page: bit 2 is Line Graphics Enable.

[LineDraw-40] Mike Jacobs. "MS LineDraw font family - Typography | Microsoft Docs". Microsoft typography. 2.00. Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved 17 August 2018.

[WD97-41] Staff (26 October 2013). "WD97: MS LineDraw Font Not Usable in Word". Microsoft. 2.0. Microsoft. KB179422, Q179422. Archived from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 1 July 2012.

Character encodings
Early telecommunications	Telegraph code Needle Morse Non-Latin Wabun/Kana Chinese Cyrillic Korean Baudot and Murray FIELDATA ASCII ISO/IEC 646 BCDIC 353 355 357 358 359 360 EBCDIC Teletex and Videotex/Teletext ISO/IEC 6937 / ITU T.51 ITU T.61 ITU T.101 World System Teletext background sets
ISO/IEC 8859	Approved -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -13 -14 -15 -16 Abandoned -12 Adaptations ISO-IR-182 ISO-IR-200 ISO-IR-201 Proposed but not approved ISO-IR-111 ISO-IR-197 French/Dutch/Turkish draft
Bibliographic use	MARC-8 ANSEL CCCII/EACC ISO 5426 / 5426-2 / 5427 / 5428 / 6438 / 6861 / 6862 / 10585 / 10586 / 10754 / 11822
National standards	ArmSCII BraSCII CNS 11643 ELOT 927 GOST 10859 GB 2312 GB 12052 GB 18030 HKSCS I.S. 434 ISCII JIS X 0201 JIS X 0208 JIS X 0212 JIS X 0213 KOI-7 KPS 9566 KS X 1001 KS X 1002 LST 1284 LST 1564 LST 1590-1 LST 1590-2 LST 1590-3 LST 1590-4 PASCII RUSCII SI 960 TIS-620 TSCII VISCII VSCII YUSCII
ISO/IEC 2022	7-bit CN CN-EXT JP JP-EXT JP-1 JP-2 JP-3 KR ISO/IEC 4873 ISO/IEC 8859 ISO/IEC 10367 Extended Unix Code / EUC CN KR JP TW
Mac OS code pages ("scripts")	Armenian Arabic Barents Cyrillic Celtic CentEuro ChineseSimp / EUC-CN ChineseTrad / Big5 Croatian Cyrillic Devanagari / ISCII Dingbats Farsi (Persian) Gaelic Georgian Greek Gujarati / ISCII Gurmukhi / ISCII Hebrew Iceland Inuit Japanese / Shift JIS Keyboard Korean / EUC-KR Latin (Kermit) Maltese/Esperanto Ogham / I.S. 434 Roman Romanian Sámi Symbol Thai / TIS-620 Turkish Turkic Cyrillic Ukrainian VT100
DOS code pages	100 111 112 113 151 152 161 162 163 164 165 166 210 220 301 437 449 489 620 667 668 707 708 709 710 711 714 715 720 721 737 768 770 771 772 773 774 775 776 777 778 790 850 851 852 853 854 855/872 856 857 858 859 860 861 862 863 864 865 866/808 867 868 869 874/1161/1162 876 877 878 881 882 883 884 885 891 895 896 897 898 899 900 903 904 906 907 909 910 911 926 927 928 929 932 934 936 938 941 942 943 944 946 947 948 949 950/1370 951 966 991 1034 1039 1040 1041 1042 1043 1044 1046 1086 1088 1092 1093 1098 1108 1109 1114 1115 1116 1117 1118 1119 1125/848 1126 1127 1131/849 1139 1167 1168 1300 1351 1361 1362 1363 1372 1373 1374 1375 1380 1381 1385 1386 1391 1392 1393 1394 3012 3021 3843 3844 3845 3846 3847 3848 30000 30001 30002 30003 30004 30005 30006 30007 30008 30009 30010 30011 30012 30013 30014 30015 30016 30017 30018 30019 30020 30021 30022 30023 30024 30025 30026 30027 30028 30029 30030 30031 30032 30033 30034 30039 30040 58152 58210 58335 59234 59829 60258 60853 61282 62306 CS Indic CSX Indic CSX+ Indic CWI-2 Iran System Kamenický KOI8 Mazovia MIK
IBM AIX code pages	367 371 806 813 819 895 896 912 913 914 915 916 919 920 921/901 922/902 923 952 953 954 955 956 957 958 959 960 961 963 964 965 970 971 1004 1006 1008 1009 1010 1011 1012 1013 1014 1015 1016 1017 1018 1019 1029 1036 1089 1111 1124 1129/1163 1133 1350 1382 1383
IBM code pages for other vendors' encodings	Apple Macintosh 1275 1280 1281 1282 1283 1284 1285 1286 Adobe 1038 1276 1277 DEC 1020 1021 1023 1090 1100 1101 1102 1103 1104 1105 1106 1107 1287 1288 HP 1050 1051 1052 1053 1054 1055 1056 1057 1058
Windows code pages	CER-GS 874/1162 (TIS-620) 932/943 (Shift JIS) 936/1386 (GBK) 950/1370 (Big5) 949/1363 (EUC-KR) 1169 1174 Extended Latin-8 1200 (UTF-16LE) 1201 (UTF-16BE) 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1261 1270 54936 (GB18030) Armenian Cyrillic + Finnish Cyrillic + French Cyrillic + German Polytonic Greek 65001 (UTF-8)
Microsoft code pages for other vendors' encodings	Apple Macintosh 10000 10001 10002 10003 10004 10005 10006 10007 10008 10010 10017 10021 10029 10079 10081 10082
EBCDIC code pages	37 390 391 392 393 394 395 435 829 834 835 837 839 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 888 889 890 931 933/1364 935/1388 937/1371 939/1399 1001 1003 1005 1007 1024 1027 1028 1030 1031 1032 1033 1037 1068 1071 1073 1074 1075 1076 1077 1078 1080 1082 1083 1085 1087 1091 1136 1150 1151 1152 1278 1279 1303 1364 1376 1377
DEC terminals (VTx)	Multinational (MCS) National Replacement (NRCS) French Canadian Swiss Spanish United Kingdom Dutch Finnish French Norwegian and Danish Swedish Norwegian and Danish (alternative) 8-bit Greek 8-bit Turkish 7-bit Hebrew 8-bit Hebrew Special Graphics Technical (TCS)
Platform specific	Acorn Adobe Standard Adobe Latin 1 Amstrad CPC Apple I Apple II Apple III ATASCII Atari ST BICS Casio calculators CDC Compucolor II CP/M+ DEC RADIX 50 DEC MCS/NRCS DG International ELWRO-Junior FIELDATA GEM GEOS GSM 03.38 HP Roman Extension HP Roman-8 HP Roman-9 HP FOCAL HP RPL IBM SQUOZE LICS LMBCS Mattel Aquarius Minitel MSX NEC APC NeXT OricSCII PCW PETSCII Sega SC-3000 Sharp calculators Sharp MZ Sinclair QL Teletext TI calculators TRS-80 Ventura International Ventura Symbol WISCII XCCS ZX80 ZX81 ZX Spectrum
Unicode / ISO/IEC 10646	UTF-1 UTF-7 UTF-8 UTF-16 (UTF-16LE/UTF-16BE) / UCS-2 UTF-32 (UTF-32LE/UTF-32BE) / UCS-4 UTF-EBCDIC GB 18030 BOCU-1 CESU-8 SCSU
TeX typesetting system	Cork IL1 IL2 IL3 L7X LGR LY1 OML OMS OMX OT1 OT2 OT3 OT4 PL0 QX T2A T2B T2C T2D T3 T4 T5 TS1 TS3 U X2
Miscellaneous code pages	ABICOMP APL 293 310 (Graphic Escape) 351 (GDDM) 907 (OEM) ISO-IR-68 ARIB STD-B24 HZ IEC-P27-1 INIS 7-bit 8-bit Cyrillic ISO-IR-169 ISO 2033 Johab Mojikyō SEASCII Stanford/ITS TACE16 TRON UTF-5 UTF-6 WTF-8
Control and nonprinting character sets	Morse prosigns C0 and C1 control codes ISO/IEC 6429 / ANSI X3.64 / ECMA-48 / JIS X 0211 ISO 6630 DIN 31626 JIS X 0207 ITU T.101 C0 C1 EBCDIC control codes Unicode control, format and separator characters Whitespace characters
Related topics	Code page Windows code page CCSID Character encodings in HTML Charset detection Han unification Hardware Mojibake
Character sets