Kamenický encoding

The Kamenický encoding (Czech: kódování Kamenických), named for the brothers Jiří and Marian Kamenický, was a code page for personal computers running MS-DOS, very popular in Czechoslovakia (since 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) around 1985–1995. Another name for this encoding is KEYBCS2, the name of the Terminate and Stay Resident utility which implemented the matching keyboard driver.

It was based on the code page 437 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 glyphs 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 characters of code page 437 remained unchanged (IBM's official Central-European code page 852 did not have this property, making programs like Norton Commander look funny with corners and joints of border lines broken by accented letters).

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 EPROMs.^[1] The optional ROM #2 "East Europe" included this encoding. While named "Kamenický" in the documentation,^[1] it was originally advertised by NEC as code page 867 (CP867) or "Czech".^[2] (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.^[3])

The encoding was also sometimes called code page 895 (CP895), for example in the WordPerfect^[4] text processor and under the Arachne^[4] 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)^[4][5] or Japan 7-Bit Latin (00895),^[6] and the IANA 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.^[4]

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 and the spreading deployment of Microsoft Office did users begin to use code page 1250, which in turn is now obsoleted by Unicode.

Character table

Each character is shown with its equivalent Unicode code point and its decimal 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 ASCII and code page 437. Code points 129–130, 132, 142, 144, 147–148, 153–154, 160–163, 172, and 174–255 are identical to code page 437 as well.^[1][7]

While the original display^{[7][nb 1]} and printer fonts^[1] defined code point 173 as section sign ('§', U+00A7), some tools also used an inverted exclamation mark ('¡', U+00A1) instead. This variant is not fully compliant with the definition of code page 867 / 895 and should therefore not be associated with these numbers. (In lack of an official code page ID for them, user-definable code page numbers 58211 (E363h) or 58239 (E37Fh) could be used as "handles" to these encodings in a local or private context.)

Differences from code page 437 have a gray border, code points used for multiple purposes in code page 437 are shaded slightly darker.

Code page 867 / 895

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
8_	Č 010C 128	ü 00FC 129	é 00E9 130	ď 010F 131	ä 00E4 132	Ď 010E 133	Ť 0164 134	č 010D 135	ě 011B 136	Ě 011A 137	Ĺ 0139 138	Í 00CD 139	ľ 013E 140	ĺ 013A 141	Ä 00C4 142	Á 00C1 143
9_	É 00C9 144	ž 017E 145	Ž 017D 146	ô 00F4 147	ö 00F6 148	Ó 00D3 149	ů 016F 150	Ú 00DA 151	ý 00FD 152	Ö 00D6 153	Ü 00DC 154	Š 0160 155	Ľ 013D 156	Ý 00DD 157	Ř 0158 158	ť 0165 159
A_	á 00E1 160	í 00ED 161	ó 00F3 162	ú 00FA 163	ň 0148 164	Ň 0147 165	Ů 016E 166	Ô 00D4 167	š 0161 168	ř 0159 169	ŕ 0155 170	Ŕ 0154 171	¼ 00BC 172	§ 00A7 173	« 00AB 174	» 00BB 175
B_	░ 2591 176	▒ 2592 177	▓ 2593 178	│ 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 00DF 225	Γ 0393 226	π 03C0 227	Σ 03A3 228	σ 03C3 229	µ 00B5 230	τ 03C4 231	Φ 03A6 232	Θ 0398 233	Ω 03A9 234	δ 03B4 235	∞ 221E 236	φ 03C6 237	ε 03B5 238	∩ 2229 239
F_	≡ 2261 240	± 00B1 241	≥ 2265 242	≤ 2264 243	⌠ 2320 244	⌡ 2321 245	÷ 00F7 246	≈ 2248 247	° 00B0 248	∙ 2219 249	· 00B7 250	√ 221A 251	ⁿ 207F 252	² 00B2 253	■ 25A0 254	NBSP 00A0 255
	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F

See also

• Mazovia encoding – similar code page for Polish

Notes

1. The Czech DOS word processor Text602 aka T602 assigned code point 173 to a section sign (U+00A7) in Kamenický encoding.

References

1. Pinwriter Familie - Pinwriter - Epromsockel - Zusätzliche Zeichensätze / Schriftarten (Printed reference manual for optional font and codepage EPROMs for NEC Pinwriters, including custom variants) (in German) (00 3/93 ed.), NEC Deutschland GmbH, 1993
2. NEC Pinwriter. Ein Maßstab in der Profiklasse. (Printed 11-page color flyer about NEC Pinwriters P20/P30, P60/P70 and P90) (in German) (P-EAM-D-5/92 ed.), NEC Deutschland GmbH, 1992 (NB. According to this publication, these printers included optional support for code page 867 (CP867), as it were also supported in display fonts in MS-DOS 5.0 and DR DOS 6.0.)
3. "Code Page (CPGID) 00867: Israel - Personal Computer", REGISTRY, Graphic Character Sets and Code Pages (IBM Corporation), 1998, retrieved 2014-06-02
4. Paul, Matthias (2001) [1996], "Specification and reference documentation for NECPINW", NECPINW.CPI - DOS code page switching driver for NEC Pinwriters (2.08 ed.), FILESPEC.TXT from NECPI208.ZIP, retrieved 2013-04-22
5. IBM Character Data Representation Architecture (CDRA) level 2
7. luki (1996-06-19). "The Czech and Slovak Character Encoding Mess Explained". cs-encodings-faq (1.10 ed.). Retrieved 2013-04-24.