Difference between revisions of "ANSI And OEM Characters"

Latest revision as of 17:02, 20 February 2017

The original IBM PC represented special characters, including non-English characters such as German “umlauts”, in the OEM character set. For example, the “umlaut u” was represented by value 129 decimal (81 hex). The OEM character set also had useful graphics characters called the “box drawing” characters. The OEM character set was used by most DOS programs.

Windows, however, uses the ANSI character set in which all non-English characters are represented by values different from their OEM values. For example, the “umlaut u” in the ANSI character set is represented by value 252 decimal (FC hex). ANSI had no equivalent of the “box drawing” characters.

Editing Legacy DOS files with OEM Character Sets

vEdit (Windows) offers you several options for overcoming the problems inherent in editing older (legacy) DOS files that use the OEM character set:

Toggle Display Mode: Press Alt-D or VIEW > Toggle display mode five times to toggle to the “ANSI/OEM” display mode. In this mode you can view and edit all non-English language characters. vEdit automatically translates the keyboard characters from ANSI to OEM, and the displayed characters from OEM to ANSI. (Make sure you have set VIEW > Font to an ANSI font such as “vEdit Ansi”.) Note, you will not be able to correctly view or edit the OEM (IBM PC) “box drawing” characters.
Font: Using VIEW > Font , select the “vEdit OEM”, “Terminal” or “Fixed-Sys” fonts which use the OEM character set. vEdit will then correctly display all graphics characters, including the “box drawing” characters.; You can enter non-English characters with the Alt - keypad method or with MISC > ASCII table. However, non-English language characters typed on non-English keyboards will not be inserted correctly because Windows will insert the ANSI value instead of the OEM value.
Translate OEM to ANSI: Use EDIT > Translate > OEM to ANSI to translate the file from the ANSI to the OEM character sets. Most non-English characters will translate correctly, any “box drawing” characters will not translate correctly.; This method is best if you plan on using the file exclusively with Windows programs in the future. It cannot be used if you ever plan on opening the file again with old (legacy) DOS programs.

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 <seo title="ANSI and OEM Characters | vEdit" description="Original IBM PC represented special characters which can cause issues while editing. vEdit offers several options for overcoming the problems inherent in editing older (legacy) DOS files that use the OEM character set."></seo>
-{{DISPLAYTITLE:ANSI and OEM Characters}}
+{{DISPLAYTITLE:Editing with ANSI and OEM Characters}}
 The original IBM PC represented special characters, including non-English characters such as German “umlauts”, in the OEM character set. For example, the “umlaut u” was represented by value 129 decimal (81 hex). The OEM character set also had useful graphics characters called the “box drawing” characters. The OEM character set was used by most DOS programs.
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 ==Related Resources==
+*[[ASCII_Table|ASCII Table]]
 *[[Binary_Text_File_Types|Binary/Data and Text File Types]]
 *[[Translate_ANSI_OEM-PC|Translating Between ANSI and OEM-PC]]