HP Roman

In computing HP Roman is a family of character sets consisting of HP Roman Extension, HP Roman-8, HP Roman-9 and several variants. Originally introduced by Hewlett-Packard around 1978, revisions and adaptations were published several times up to 1999. The 1985 revisions were later standardized as IBM codepages 1050 and 1051. Supporting many European languages, the character sets were used by various HP workstations, terminals, calculators as well as many printers, also from third-parties.

Overview

HP Roman is a family of single byte character encodings supporting several Latin script based languages of Europe. It was originally introduced by Hewlett-Packard around 1978 as 7- and 8-bit HP Roman Extension for some of their computer terminals and printers. Early versions of the 8-bit variant were also used by some HP workstations in 1978/1979. Several revisions led to more characters being added before the 8-bit variant of the character set became officially known as HP Roman-8 in 1983.^[1] Soon later, this became the default character set of the HP-UX^[2] operating system and the page description language PCL for inkjet^[3][4] and laser printers in 1984. The character set was again expanded in 1985.^[5][6] A modified adaptation of the 1984 definition of Roman-8 was used in the HP Portable series of computers,^[7][8] whereas a derivation of the updated 1985 definition of Roman-8 was used in several early RPL calculators and corresponding thermal printers since 1986.^[9][10] The latest off-spring of the family is HP Roman-9, which was introduced in 1999 to include the euro sign.^[11]

Codepage layout

Roman Extension

The character set was originally introduced by Hewlett-Packard as extended ASCII 7-bit codepage named HP Roman Extension^[12][13] (also known as RE,^[13] code page 1050, CP1050 or ibm-1050^[14]), which existed at least since 1978.^{[15][16][17][18][19]} On some systems it was also accessible as 8-bit codepage. Before the name "Roman-8" was established for the 8-bit variant in 1983, this was sometimes called "8-bit mode", "8-bit Roman Extension" or "HP Roman-8 Extension". Over the years both variants were revised to include more characters. The final 1985 revision of the character set was also standardized as codepage 1050 by IBM in 1989.^[14]

The table shows the 1982 version (a current variant is shown in the Roman-8 chapter).

Legend:

Roman-8

HP Roman-8^{[2][20][6][21][22][23][24]} (also known as HP Roman 8, HP Roman, hp-roman8, roman8, R8, code page 1051, CP1051 or ibm-1051^[25][26] is an 8-bit single byte character encoding that is mainly used on HP-UX^[2] and many Hewlett-Packard^[9][10] and PCL compatible printers. The name Roman-8 appeared in 1983,^[1] but a pre-cursor of the character set was already used by the HP 250 and HP 300 workstations since 1978/1979 as 8-bit Roman Extension.^{[16][17][18][19]}

The original 1983/1984 version of Roman-8 still had some codepoints undefined.^{[3][7][8][4][27]} In a 1985 revision codepoints 177 (Ý), 178 (ý), 242 (·), 243 (µ), 244 (¶) and 245 (¾) were added and the appearance of codepoint 228 was changed from a stroked d (đ) to an eth (ð).^[5][6] This final revision of the character set was also standardized as codepage 1051 by IBM in 1989.^[25][26]

In contrast to the newer HP Roman-9, HP Roman-8 does not officially provide a codepoint for the euro sign. However, one source recommends to map it to codepoint 186 (as in Roman-9),^[6] whereas another recommends codepoint 128 (0x80),^[22] which lines up with where the character can end up in the modified HP Roman-8 character set as well.

The following table shows the latest 1985 definition of the HP Roman-8 character set (with some remarks regarding former definitions and alternative interpretations). Each character is shown with a potential Unicode equivalent and its decimal code, however, sources differ in the recommended translations for some of the codes even among definitions from Hewlett-Packard^[2] and IBM.^[25][26]

Legend:

Modified Roman-8

In 1984, Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP 110 / HP Portable personal computer followed by the HP 110 Plus / HP Portable Plus in 1985. In "HP mode" they supported a derivation of the 1984 revision of 8-bit HP Roman-8 (still lacking the six additional characters at codepoints 177 to 178 and 242 to 245, and with codepoint 228 still resembling a stroked d (đ)), but with 32 additional graphical symbols at codepoints 128 to 159.^[7][8]

Legend:

In 1986,^[28] Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP-18C calculator and HP 82240A thermo printer,^[28] which internally used an extended variant of the 1985 revision of the 8-bit HP Roman-8 character set (now with the six additional characters defined and with codepoint 228 already changed to an eth (ð)), but with the codepoints 127 (0x7F) and 160 (0xA0) as well as the control codes in the range 128 to 159 (0x80 to 0x9F) being replaced by additional displayable characters.^[9][10][29] On the HP-28 series, characters above 147 (0x93) could not be displayed on the calculator, only be printed.^[29][9][30]

There is no official codepoint definition for the euro sign in this modified character set. The HP 49/50 series of calculators use a different character set^[31] based on ECMA-94 / ISO 8859-1 which includes the euro symbol. When printing to the HP 82240A printer via a user-defined translation vector defined in the PRTPAR variable,^[32][33][34] the euro sign could be translated to f.e. codepoint 128 (0x80). Mapping the euro sign to code point 186 (0xBA) as in HP Roman-9 would be another choice.

Legend:

Roman-9

HP Roman-9 (also known as HP Roman 9, hp-roman9, roman9 or R9) is a slight modification of the 8-bit HP Roman-8 character set where the general currency sign (¤) at codepoint 186 (0xBA) was replaced by the euro sign (€).^[35][36] It was introduced in early 1999.^[11]

Legend:

See also

• RPL character set
• Western Latin character sets (computing)

References

External links

• "Graphical View of Code Page 1051". ICU's Converter Explorer. Retrieved 2016-08-09. 

Character encodings
Character sets
Early telecommunications	ASCII ISO/IEC 646 ISO/IEC 6937 T.61 BCDIC Baudot code Morse code (Telegraph code Wabun code) Special telegraphy codes: Non-Latin, Chinese, Cyrillic
ISO/IEC 8859	-1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12 -13 -14 -15 -16
Bibliographic use	ANSEL ISO 5426 / 5426-2 / 5427 / 5428 / 6438 / 6861 / 6862 / 10585 / 10586 / 10754 / 11822 MARC-8
National standards	ArmSCII CNS 11643 GOST 10859 GB 18030 HKSCS ISCII JIS X 0201 JIS X 0208 JIS X 0212 JIS X 0213 KOI-7 KPS 9566 KS X 1001 PASCII SI 960 TIS-620 TSCII VISCII YUSCII
EUC	CN JP KR TW
ISO/IEC 2022	CN JP KR CCCII
MacOS code pages ("scripts")	Arabic Mac OS Celtic CentEuro ChineseSimp / EUC-CN ChineseTrad / Big5 Croatian Cyrillic Devanagari Dingbats Farsi Greek Gujarati Gurmukhi Hebrew Iceland Japanese / ShiftJIS Korean / EUC-KR Roman Romanian Symbol Thai / TIS-620 Turkish Ukrainian
DOS code pages	100 111 112 113 151 161 162 163 164 165 220 300 301 437 449 620 667 668 708 709 710 711 720 737 770 771 772 773 774 775 776 777 778 790 808 848 849 850 851 852 853 854 855 856 857 858 859 860 861 862 863 864 865 866 867 868 869 872 874 876 877 878 881 882 883 884 885 891 895 897 898 899 900 903 904 906 907 909 910 911 925 926 927 928 929 932 934 936 938 941 942 943 944 946 947 948 949 950/1370 951 966 991 1004 1034 1039 1040 1041 1042 1043 1044 1046 1086 1088 1090 1092 1093 1098 1108 1109 1114 1115 1116 1117 1118 1119 1125 1126 1127 1131 1139 1161 1162 1167 1168 1351 1361 1362 1363 1372 1373 1374 1375 1380 1381 1385 1386 1391 1392 1393 1394 17248 Kamenický Mazovia CWI-2 KOI8 MIK Iran System
IBM AIX code pages	367 371 806 813 819 895 896 901 902 912 913 914 915 916 919 920 921 922 923 952 953 954 955 956 957 958 959 960 961 962 963 964 965 970 971 1006 1008 1009 1010 1011 1012 1013 1014 1015 1016 1017 1018 1019 1020 1029 1036 1089 1111 1124 1129 1133 1163 1350 1382 1383
IBM Apple MacIntosh Emulations	1275 1280 1281 1282 1283 1284 1285 1286
IBM Adobe Emulations	1038 1276 1277
IBM DEC Emulations	1021 1023 1100 1101 1102 1103 1104 1105 1106 1107 1287 1288
IBM HP Emulations	1050 1051 1052 1053 1054 1055 1056 1057 1058
Windows code pages	874/1162 (TIS-620) 932/943 (Shift JIS) 936/1386 (GBK) 950/1370 (Big5) 949/1363 (EUC-KR) 1169 1174 1200 (UTF-16LE) 1201 (UTF-16BE) 1250 1251 1252 1253 1254 1255 1256 1257 1258 1261 1270 54936 (GB18030)
EBCDIC code pages	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37/1140 38 39 40 251 252 254 256 257 258 259 260 264 273/1141 274 275 276 277/1142 278/1143 279 280/1144 281 282 283 284/1145 285/1146 286 287 288 289 290 293 297/1147 298 310 320 321 322 330 351 352 353 355 357 358 359 360 361 363 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 410 420/16804 421 423 424/12712 425 435 500/1148 803 829 833 834 835 836 837 838/1160 839 870/1153 871/1149 875/9067 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 888 889 890 892 893 905 918 924 930/1390 931 933/1364 935/1388 937/1371 939/1399 1001 1002 1003 1005 1007 1024 1025/1154 1026/1155 1027 1028 1030 1031 1032 1033 1037 1047 1068 1069 1070 1071 1073 1074 1075 1076 1077 1078 1079 1080 1081 1082 1083 1084 1085 1087 1091 1097 1110 1112/1156 1113 1122/1157 1123/1158 1130/1164 1132 1136 1137 1150 1151 1152 1159 1165 1166 1278 1303 1364 1376 1377 JEF KEIS
Platform specific	ATASCII Atari ST BICS CDC CPC DEC Radix-50 DMCS/NRCS ELWRO-Junior FIELDATA GEM GEOS GSM 03.38 HP Roman Extension HP Roman-8 HP Roman-9 HP calculators LICS LMBCS NEC APC NeXT PETSCII TI calculators 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
Miscellaneous code pages	ABICOMP APL Cork HZ JOHAB TRON UTF-5 UTF-6 WTF-8
Related topics	Control character (C0 C1) CCSID Character encodings in HTML Charset detection Han unification Hardware ISO 6429/IEC 6429/ANSI X3.64 Mojibake