ISO/IEC 8859-15

ISO/IEC 8859-15:1999, Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 15: Latin alphabet No. 9, is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1999. It is informally referred to as Latin-9 (and was for a while called Latin-0). It is similar to ISO 8859-1, and thus generally intended for “Western European” languages, but replaces some less common symbols with the euro sign and some letters that were now deemed missing in part 1 for the target use.

ISO-8859-15 is the IANA preferred charset name for this standard when supplemented with the C0 and C1 control codes from ISO/IEC 6429.

Microsoft has assigned code page 28605 aka Windows-28605 to ISO-8859-15.

There were attempts to make ISO-8859-15 the default character set for 8-bit communication, but it was never able to supplant the popular ISO-8859-1. However, it did see some use as a character set for terminal or textual programs under Linux when the Euro sign was needed, but the use of full UTF-8 (Unicode) was not practical. All the printable characters from both ISO/IEC 8859-1 and ISO/IEC 8859-15 are also found in Windows-1252. In February 2016 0.2% of all web sites use ISO-8859-15.^[1][2]

Differences from ISO-8859-1

Position	0xA4	0xA6	0xA8	0xB4	0xB8	0xBC	0xBD	0xBE
8859-1	¤	¦	¨	´	¸	¼	½	¾
8859-15	€	Š	š	Ž	ž	Œ	œ	Ÿ

ISO-8859-15 differs from ISO-8859-1 in 8 positions.^[3] € became necessary when the euro was introduced. Š, š, Ž, and ž are used in some loanwords and transliteration of Russian names in Finnish and Estonian typography. Œ and œ are French ligatures, and Ÿ is needed in French all-caps text, as it is present in a few proper names such as the city of l'Haÿ-les-Roses or the poet and writer Pierre Louÿs. As diacritics are frequently (though incorrectly^[4]) dropped in all-caps text in French, a code point for Ÿ wasn't deemed necessary for ISO-8859-1, even though one was given for its lower-case equivalent ÿ (at 0xFF).

Coverage

ISO 8859-15 encodes what it refers to as "Latin alphabet no. 9". This character set is used throughout the Americas, Western Europe, Oceania, and much of Africa. It is also commonly used in most standard romanizations of East-Asian languages.

Each character is encoded as a single eight-bit code value. These code values can be used in almost any data interchange system to communicate in the following languages:

Modern languages with complete coverage of their alphabet

Afrikaans Albanian Breton Catalan Danish[lower-alpha 1] Dutch[lower-alpha 2] English[lower-alpha 3]

Estonian Faroese Finnish French Galician German Icelandic

Irish[lower-alpha 4] Italian Kurdish[lower-alpha 5] Latin[lower-alpha 6] Luxembourgish[lower-alpha 7] Malay[lower-alpha 8] Norwegian[lower-alpha 9]

Occitan Portuguese[lower-alpha 10] Rhaeto-Romanic Scottish Gaelic Scots Spanish Swahili

Swedish Tagalog Walloon

Notes

1. Complete support except for Ǿ/ǿ which are missing. Ǿ/ǿ can be replaced with Ø/ø at the cost of increased ambiguity.
2. Commonly supported with nearly complete coverage of the Dutch alphabet, as the missing IJ, ij should always be represented as two-character IJ or ij in electronic form.
3. US and modern British.
4. New orthography.
5. Kurdish Unified Alphabet, based on the Latin character set.
6. Basic classical orthography.
7. Basic classical orthography.
8. Rumi script.
9. Bokmål and Nynorsk.
10. European and Brazilian.

Coverage of punctuation signs and apostrophes

For some languages listed above, the correct typographical quotation marks are missing, since only «, », ", and ' are included.

Also, this encoding does not provide the correct character for the apostrophe, and oriented single high quotation marks, although some texts use the spacing grave accent and spacing acute accent, which are both part of ISO 8859-1, instead of the 6-shaped/9-shaped quotations marks or apostrophes (and this works reliably with some font styles, where all these characters are displayed as slanted wedge glyphs).

Codepage layout

Legend:

Alphabetic   Control character   Numeric digit   Punctuation

Extended punctuation   Graphic character   International   Undefined

Differences from ISO/IEC 8859-1 have a thick border.

ISO/IEC 8859-15

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
0_
1_
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	| 007C 124	} 007D 125	~ 007E 126
8_
9_
A_	NBSP 00A0 160	¡ 00A1 161	¢ 00A2 162	£ 00A3 163	€ 20AC 164	¥ 00A5 165	Š 0160 166	§ 00A7 167	š 0161 168	© 00A9 169	ª 00AA 170	« 00AB 171	¬ 00AC 172	SHY 00AD 173	® 00AE 174	¯ 00AF 175
B_	° 00B0 176	± 00B1 177	² 00B2 178	³ 00B3 179	Ž 017D 180	µ 00B5 181	¶ 00B6 182	· 00B7 183	ž 017E 184	¹ 00B9 185	º 00BA 186	» 00BB 187	Œ 0152 188	œ 0153 189	Ÿ 0178 190	¿ 00BF 191
C_	À 00C0 192	Á 00C1 193	Â 00C2 194	Ã 00C3 195	Ä 00C4 196	Å 00C5 197	Æ 00C6 198	Ç 00C7 199	È 00C8 200	É 00C9 201	Ê 00CA 202	Ë 00CB 203	Ì 00CC 204	Í 00CD 205	Î 00CE 206	Ï 00CF 207
D_	Ð 00D0 208	Ñ 00D1 209	Ò 00D2 210	Ó 00D3 211	Ô 00D4 212	Õ 00D5 213	Ö 00D6 214	× 00D7 215	Ø 00D8 216	Ù 00D9 217	Ú 00DA 218	Û 00DB 219	Ü 00DC 220	Ý 00DD 221	Þ 00DE 222	ß 00DF 223
E_	à 00E0 224	á 00E1 225	â 00E2 226	ã 00E3 227	ä 00E4 228	å 00E5 229	æ 00E6 230	ç 00E7 231	è 00E8 232	é 00E9 233	ê 00EA 234	ë 00EB 235	ì 00EC 236	í 00ED 237	î 00EE 238	ï 00EF 239
F_	ð 00F0 240	ñ 00F1 241	ò 00F2 242	ó 00F3 243	ô 00F4 244	õ 00F5 245	ö 00F6 246	÷ 00F7 247	ø 00F8 248	ù 00F9 249	ú 00FA 250	û 00FB 251	ü 00FC 252	ý 00FD 253	þ 00FE 254	ÿ 00FF 255
	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F

Aliases

ISO 8859-15 also has the following, vendor-specific aliases:

• WE8ISO8859P15 (Oracle database)

See also

• Western Latin character sets (computing)

References

1. http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/character_encoding
2. http://w3techs.com/faq
3. "ISO-8859-15". IANA. Retrieved 8 March 2016.
4. "Accentuation des majuscules" [Accenting of capitals] (in French). Académie française. Retrieved 8 August 2015. On veille donc, en bonne typographie, à utiliser systématiquement les capitales accentuées ... [One takes care then, in good typography, to use accented capitals systematically ...]

External links

• ISO/IEC 8859-15:1999
• ISO/IEC 8859-15:1998 - 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets, Part 15: Latin alphabet No. 9 (draft dated August 1, 1997; superseded by ISO/IEC 8859-15:1999, published March 15, 1999)
• ISO Latin 9 as compared with ISO Latin 1
• ISO-IR 203 European supplementary Latin set (September 16, 1998)