ISO/IEC 8859-2

ISO/IEC 8859-2:1999, Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 2: Latin alphabet No. 2, is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1987. It is informally referred to as "Latin-2". It is generally intended for Central[1] or "Eastern European" languages that are written in the Latin script. Note that ISO/IEC 8859-2 is very different from code page 852 (MS-DOS Latin 2, PC Latin 2) which is also referred to as "Latin-2" in Czech and Slovak regions.[2] Code page 912 is an extension.

ISO/IEC 8859-2

MIME / IANA	ISO-8859-2
Alias(es)	iso-ir-101, csISOLatin2, latin2, l2, IBM1111
Language(s)	(see below)
Standard	ECMA-94:1986, ISO/IEC 8859
Classification	Extended ASCII, ISO 8859
Extends	US-ASCII
Based on	ISO-8859-1
Other related encoding(s)	Windows-1251

ISO-8859-2 is the IANA preferred charset name for this standard when supplemented with the C0 and C1 control codes from ISO/IEC 6429. 0.1% of all web pages use ISO 8859-2 in December 2018.[3] Microsoft has assigned code page 28592 a.k.a. Windows-28592 to ISO-8859-2 in Windows. IBM assigned Code page 1111 to ISO 8859-2.

Windows-1250 is similar to ISO-8859-2 and has all the printable characters it has and more. However a few of them are rearranged (unlike Windows-1252, which keeps all printable characters from ISO-8859-1 in the same place).

Language coverage

These code values can be used for the following languages:

• Albanian
• Bosnian
• Croatian
• Czech
• German[lower-alpha 1]
• Hungarian
• Polish
• Serbian Latin
• Slovak
• Slovene
• Upper Sorbian
• Lower Sorbian
• Turkmen

1. Fully compatible with ISO/IEC 8859-1 for German texts.

It can also be used for Romanian, but it is not well suited for that language, due to lacking letters s and t with commas below, although it provides s and t with similar-looking cedillas. These letters were unified in the first versions of the Unicode standard, meaning that the appearance with cedilla or with a comma was treated as a glyph choice rather than as separate characters; fonts intended for use with Romanian should therefore, in theory, have characters with a comma below at those code points.

Microsoft did not really provide such fonts for computers sold in Romania. Still, ISO/IEC 8859-2 and Windows-1250 (with the same problem) have been heavily used for Romanian. Unicode subsequently disunified the comma variants from the cedilla variants, and has since taken the lead for web pages, which however often have s and t with cedilla anyway. Unicode notes as of 2014 that disunifying the letters with comma below was a mistake, causing corruptions of Romanian data: pre-existing data and input methods would still contain the older cedilla codepoints, complicating text searching.

Code page layout

In the following table characters are shown together with their corresponding Unicode code points. Differences from ISO-8859-1 are shown with darker shading on top of their legend colours.

ISO/IEC 8859-2 (Latin-2)

	_0	_1	_2	_3	_4	_5	_6	_7	_8	_9	_A	_B	_C	_D	_E	_F
0_ 0
1_ 16
2_ 32	SP 0020	! 0021	" 0022	# 0023	$ 0024	% 0025	& 0026	' 0027	( 0028	) 0029	* 002A	+ 002B	, 002C	- 002D	. 002E	/ 002F
3_ 48	0 0030	1 0031	2 0032	3 0033	4 0034	5 0035	6 0036	7 0037	8 0038	9 0039	: 003A	; 003B	< 003C	= 003D	> 003E	? 003F
4_ 64	@ 0040	A 0041	B 0042	C 0043	D 0044	E 0045	F 0046	G 0047	H 0048	I 0049	J 004A	K 004B	L 004C	M 004D	N 004E	O 004F
5_ 80	P 0050	Q 0051	R 0052	S 0053	T 0054	U 0055	V 0056	W 0057	X 0058	Y 0059	Z 005A	[ 005B	\ 005C	] 005D	^ 005E	_ 005F
6_ 96	` 0060	a 0061	b 0062	c 0063	d 0064	e 0065	f 0066	g 0067	h 0068	i 0069	j 006A	k 006B	l 006C	m 006D	n 006E	o 006F
7_ 112	p 0070	q 0071	r 0072	s 0073	t 0074	u 0075	v 0076	w 0077	x 0078	y 0079	z 007A	{ 007B	| 007C	} 007D	~ 007E
8_ 128
9_ 144
A_ 160	NBSP 00A0	Ą 0104	˘ 02D8	Ł 0141	¤ 00A4	Ľ 013D	Ś 015A	§ 00A7	¨ 00A8	Š 0160	Ş 015E	Ť 0164	Ź 0179	SHY 00AD	Ž 017D	Ż 017B
B_ 176	° 00B0	ą 0105	˛ 02DB	ł 0142	´ 00B4	ľ 013E	ś 015B	ˇ 02C7	¸ 00B8	š 0161	ş 015F	ť 0165	ź 017A	˝ 02DD	ž 017E	ż 017C
C_ 192	Ŕ 0154	Á 00C1	Â 00C2	Ă 0102	Ä 00C4	Ĺ 0139	Ć 0106	Ç 00C7	Č 010C	É 00C9	Ę 0118	Ë 00CB	Ě 011A	Í 00CD	Î 00CE	Ď 010E
D_ 208	Đ 0110	Ń 0143	Ň 0147	Ó 00D3	Ô 00D4	Ő 0150	Ö 00D6	× 00D7	Ř 0158	Ů 016E	Ú 00DA	Ű 0170	Ü 00DC	Ý 00DD	Ţ 0162	ß 00DF
E_ 224	ŕ 0155	á 00E1	â 00E2	ă 0103	ä 00E4	ĺ 013A	ć 0107	ç 00E7	č 010D	é 00E9	ę 0119	ë 00EB	ě 011B	í 00ED	î 00EE	ď 010F
F_ 240	đ 0111	ń 0144	ň 0148	ó 00F3	ô 00F4	ő 0151	ö 00F6	÷ 00F7	ř 0159	ů 016F	ú 00FA	ű 0171	ü 00FC	ý 00FD	ţ 0163	˙ 02D9

  Letter   Number   Punctuation   Symbol   Other   Undefined

See also

• Character encoding
• Polish code pages

References

1. "Microsoft Outlook Message Encodings".
2. The Czech and Slovak Character Encoding Mess Explained
3. https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/character_encoding

External links

• ISO 8859-2:1999
• Standard ECMA-94: 8-Bit Single Byte Coded Graphic Character Sets - Latin Alphabets No. 1 to No. 4 2nd edition (June 1986)
• ISO-IR 101 Right-Hand Part of Latin Alphabet No.2 (February 1, 1986)
• ISO 8859-2 (Latin 2) Resources