What Is a Code Page?

A code page is a table that defines the character set you are using. Each character set contains 256 entries specific to a country or language. The characters are translated from the code page table and used by your keyboard, screen, and printer. An example is the set of letters, numbers, and symbols (such as accent marks) used by French-Canadians. When the character set is put into a table for use by DOS, it becomes the Canadian-French code page.

There are two types of code pages, hardware and prepared. A hardware code page is built into a device. For example, a printer manufactured for use in Portugal has a Portuguese hardware code page in it. Many devices can use only their own hardware code page.

Prepared code pages are provided in code-page information (.CPI) files in your software. OpenDOS includes the following prepared code pages:

• 437 – United States code page

• 850 – Multilingual code page, including all characters for most languages of European, North American, and South American countries

• 860 – Portuguese code page

• 863 – Canadian-French code page

• 865 – Nordic code page, including all characters for the Norwegian and Danish languages