◄Up► ◄Next► ◄Previous► ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The Microsoft Windows character sets define the correspondence between graphic symbols and 8-bit character values. The order of symbols in a character set specifies the required order of bitmap and vector glyph data in Windows font files. Windows currently supports three characters sets: ANSI, OEM, and Symbol. This appendix defines these character sets and illustrates the symbols associated with each set. ANSI Characters The ANSI characters includes the standard ASCII characters as well as several international and desktop publishing characters. ANSI is the default character set for Windows. Printer drivers should support ANSI whenever possible. If necessary, the printer should convert ANSI codes to the native character set for the printer or the printer font. For example, the PCL/HP LaserJet driver supplied with Windows converts ANSI into US ASCII, HP Roman 8, or ECMA 94, depending on the character set of the selected printer font. This requires that the printer font contain symbols similar to those used in ANSI. TrueType Extensions to ANSI Character Set The Windows ANSI character set now includes 19 new characters for TrueType fonts only. ANSI Position Character ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 131 (0x83) Florin (latin small letter script f) 132 (0x84) Based Line Double Quotes (low double comma quotation mark) 133 (0x85) Ellipsis (horizontal ellipsis) 134 (0x86) Dagger (Olelisk) 135 (0x87) Double Dagger 137 (0x89) Permil (per mille sign) 138 (0x8A) S Hacek (upper case; latin capital letter s hacek) 139 (0x8B) Diminuitive Less Than Sign (left pointing single guillemet) 140 (0x8C) Ligature (upper case; latin capital letter o e) 147 (0x93) Open Double Quotes (double turned comma quotation mark) 148 (0x94) Close Double Quotes (double comma quotation mark) 149 (0x95) Bullet 150 (0x96) Short En Dash (en dash) 151 (0x97) Long Em Dash (em dash) 153 (0x99) Trademark 154 (0x9A) s Hacek (lower case; latin small letter s hacek) 155 (0x9B) Diminuitive Greater Than sign (right pointing single guillemet) 156 (0x9C) Ligature (lower case; latin small letter o e) 159 (0x9F) Y Dieresis (upper case; latin capital letter y diaresis) OEM Characters The OEM characters correspond to a computer's native character set. For example, on IBM PC computers used in the United States, the OEM character set is the IBM PC character set. Symbol Characters The Symbol characters are a rich set of characters used for mathematics and desktop publishing. Other Characters Other character sets are occasionally used for special purposes in specific applications or specialized drivers. If an application encounters a character set that it does not recognize when enumerating fonts, it should remember the font and character set index to allow the user to select the font and print it, unless it relies on the assignment of characters to byte values. The application should make no assumptions about character assignments. Font Mapping GDI considers a font's character set as the most important attribute when selecting a font from those available. The character set has a high weight to ensure that the output is at least meaningful if not beautiful. To prevent unexpected results, drivers that implement their own font mappers in the RealizeObject function should use criteria similar to GDI's when selecting fonts. ♦