Syrena logo COMPUTER HELP,   HTML TAGS,
SPECIAL CHARACTERS

East European, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew Characters
Bill Biega's
Computer
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TABLE OF SPECIAL CHARACTERS - UNICODE & ISO-8859


Have you ever wanted to send an email that includes foreign (French, German, Polish, etc) characters?
Most up to date email programs allow you to do this, but you have to know the correct codes to use.
To enter a special character, hold down [ALT] key and type 0xxx, where xxx represents digits from following tables.
This will also let you use special characters in Word documents, without the hassle of setting up special code pages and keyboards.

If you are writing an HTML or XML document, you have a much greater choice if you use UNICODE character code. In fact it is preferable to use UNICODE rather than ISO-8859 code. The correct characters will be recognized by all Browsers that adhere to International standards. You have a choice of using decimal code or hexadecimal code.
To enter a character in decimal UNICODE , type: &#xxx; (where xxx represent digits from the following table.)
For example, on the following line you should see the symbols for Euro, British Pound and US Dollar, each repeated twice, first with Unicode, then with ISO 8859-2.
€   € ,  £   £ ,  $   $ .   If any one of them does not show correctly, adjust the Character setting in your browser.
In Netscape4 go to: View/Character Set; In Netscape6 or 7 go to View/Character Coding (you may have to click "More" to see an additional menu with more choices); In MS Internet Explorer 5 go to View/Encoding. Mac/Netscape users : choose "open in browser" from File menu.

chardecimal
unicode
iso8859  chardecimal
unicode
iso8859  chardecimal
unicode
iso8859
8364128  $3636  ©169169

for the following characters, the digits for decimal unicode and iso 8859-1 are identical.

char code   char code   char code   char code   char code   char code   char code   char code
 160  ¡161  ¢162  ³163  ¤164  ¹165  ¦166  §167
¨168  ©169  º170  «171  ¬172  ­173  ®174  ¿175
°176  ±177  ²178  ³179  ´180  µ181  182  ·183
¸184  ¹185  º186  »187  ¾188  ½189  ¾190  ¿191
à192  -193  â194  ã195  ä196  å197  æ198  ç199
è200  é201  ê202  ë203  ì204  í205  î206  ï207
ð208  ñ209  ò210  ó211  ô212  õ213  ö214  ×215
ø216  ù217  ú218  û219  ü220  ý221  þ222  ß223
à224  á225  â226  ã227  ä228  å229  æ230  ç231
è232  é233  ê234  ë235  ì236  í237  î238  ï239
ð240  ñ241  ò242  ó243  ô244  õ245  ö246  ÷247
ø248  ù249  ú250  û251  ü252  ý253  þ254  ÿ255

NOTE: The character signs have been placed using Windows ([ALT]0xxxx) ISO 8859-1 coding. Therefore they will not show up correctly, if browser is not set for Western ISO 8859-1 character set. If you set browser for any other character set, in the Character column you will see the equivalent characters for the selected set.

For example:
If you select "Central European ISO-8859-2", you will see Czech, Hungarian and Polish characters,
However, if you select "Central European Windows", you will still see Czech, Hungarian and Polish characters, but some of them are in different positions on the chart, because Microsoft does not strictly follow international standards!
If you select "Cyrillic ISO-8859-5", you will see Russian characters.
If you select "Unicode (UTF-8)" you will only see rectangles, because Unicode expects to see the "&#xxx;" coding, not the "[ALT]0xxx" used in preparing this chart.
Your screen driver may not allow you to see all characters correctly, for some sets. Likewise, your printer may not be able to print all sets. For a printer friendly version of each version select the IS0-8859-1 chart or the IS0-8859-2 chart. They will print on any Ink-jet or Laser printer.

English and North American browsers automatically select ISO-8859-1. Central European browsers automatically select ISO-8859-2. However, if the characters are written in Unicode, then all modern browsers will read the characters correctly, because every character in every language has been assigned a unique code. That is why it is desirable to use Unicode when preparing HTML or XML documents.

For an excellent discussion of character sets, see http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html. It includes tables of the various ISO-8859 sets. They are all -in hexadecimal format.

UNICODE charts may be seen at http://www.unicode.org/charts/ . The charts are provided in Adobe format documents, the numbers on the charts are in hexadecimal format.
It is not neccesary to translate into decimals, for use with up-to-date Netscape and MS Explorer browsers. To enter a character using its hexadecimal number, type: &#Xhhh; (where hhh is the hexadecimal number.)
For example, the copyright sign © is typed © in decimal, but © in hexadecimal (letters are not case sensitive, a9 or A9 are both acceptable. Leading zeros nay be omitted, so © and © are read the same by the browser).
The tables of main interest are:
Basic Latin - U0000.pdf (The initial 128 character ASCII set - basic letters and numerals and control characters)
Latin-1 Supplement - U0080.pdf (the original extended ASCII set with West European accented letters of ISO-8859-1)
Latin Extended-A - U0100.pdf (the ISO-8859-2 set and more, Central European and Baltic letters)
Greek - U0370.pdf (modern and ancient Greek letters)
Cyrillic - U0400.pdf (includes all Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian letters)
Miscellaneous Symbols - U2600.pdf (Chess, card, weather, astrological, religious symbols, smileys, etc.)

The following table shows the coding for selected characters from the Latin Extended-A table in http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0100.pdf. If your Browser is one of the latest versions (such as Netscape 7 or Microsoft Explorer 5.5) it will probably read this table correctly. if not adjust your Browser to read Unicode (UTF-8) Character Set. For a printer friendly version, select the EE chart.

Table of UNICODE codes,
for Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Scandinavian and some other Central European Languages.

The hexadecimal digits hhh used in the &#Xhhh; code.

char code   char code   char code   char code   char code   char code   char code   char code
Ā100  Đ110  Ę118  Ķ136  Ń143  Ód3  Ś15a  Ű170
ā101  đ111  ę119  ķ137  ń144  óf3  ś15b  ű171
Ă102  Ď10e  Ě11a  Ĺ139;  Ņ145  Œ152  Š160  Ų172
ă103  ď10f  ě11b  ĺ13a  ņ146  œ153  š161  ų173
Ą104  Ē112      Ļ13b  Ň147  ŕ155  Ţ162  Ÿ178
ą105  ē113  Ģ122  ļ13c  ň148  Ŗ156  ţ163  Ź179
Ć106  ĕ115  ģ123  Ľ13d  Ō14c  ŗ157      ź17a
ć107  Ė116  Ī12a  ľ13e  ō14d  Ř158  ť165  Ż17b
Č10c  ė117  ī12b      Ő150  ř159      ż17c
č10d      Į12e  Ł141  ő151  Ş15e      Ž17d
        į12f  ł142      ş15f      ž17e
Example: Ł = Ł


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Last update Feb. 28, 2012