Mazovia encoding

Mazovia encoding is used under MS-DOS to represent Polish texts. Basically it is code page 437 with some positions filled with Polish letters. A supplemental feature was that the block graphic characters of code page 437 remained unchanged (IBM's official Central-European code page 852 did not have this property, making programs like Norton Commander look funny with corners and joints of border lines broken by accented letters).

The Mazovia encoding was designed in 1984 by Jan Klimowicz of IMM (pl). It was designed as part of a project to develop and produce a Polish IBM PC clone codenamed "Mazovia 1016 (pl)". The code page was therefore optimized for that computer's typically periphery, a graphics card with dual switchable graphics, a keyboard using US English and Russian layouts and printers with Polish fonts. In 1986, the Polish National Bank (NBP) adopted the Mazovia encoding as a standard, thereby causing its widespread acceptance and distribution in Poland. They also were instrumental in Ipaco producing compatible computers with Taiwanese components under the direction of Zbigniew Jakubas (pl) and Krzysztof Sochacki.

Some ambiguity exists in the official code page assignment for the Mazovia encoding:

PTS-DOS and S/DOS support this encoding under code page 667 (CP667).^[1] The same encoding was also called code page 991 (CP991) in some Polish software,^{[nb 1]} however, the FreeDOS implementation of code page 991 seems not to be identical to this original encoding. The DOS code page switching driver NECPINW.CPI for NEC Pinwriters supports the Mazovia encoding under both code pages 667 and 991.^[1] FreeDOS has meanwhile introduced support for the original Mazovia encoding under code page 790 (CP790) as well.

Code page layout

Each character is shown with its equivalent Unicode code point and its decimal code point. Only the second half of the table (code points 128–255) is shown, the first half (code points 0–127) being the same as ASCII and code page 437. Code points 128–133, 135–140, 142, 147–148, 150–151, 153–155, 157, 159, 162, 168–255 are identical to code page 437 as well.^[2]

Several variants of this encoding exists:

• Mazovia 157 (ś is at code point 157 instead of 158)
• Fido Mazovia (ć is at code point 135 instead of 141)
• FreeDOS Mazovia (złoty sign at code point 155). FreeDOS supports this variant under code page 991, although the original definition of code page 991, which pre-dates FreeDOS, appears to have been identical to code page 667 / 790.

These variants are not fully compliant with the definition of code page 667 / 790 and should therefore not be associated with these numbers.

Differences from code page 437 have a black border, code points used for multiple purposes in code page 437 are shaded.

Notes

1. ↑ The Polish text converter PLC, developed by Marcin Gryszkalis between 1997-1999, supports the standard Mazovia encoding under code page 991 as well as under the symbolic handle MAZ. The Fidonet Mazovia encoding is supported under symbolic handle MFD instead.

References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Paul, Matthias (2001) [1996], "Specification and reference documentation for NECPINW", NECPINW.CPI - DOS code page switching driver for NEC Pinwriters (2.08 ed.), FILESPEC.TXT from NECPI208.ZIP, retrieved 2013-04-22 
2. ↑ Pinwriter Familie - Pinwriter - Epromsockel - Zusätzliche Zeichensätze / Schriftarten (Printed reference manual for optional font and codepage EPROMs for NEC Pinwriters, including custom variants) (in German) (00 3/93 ed.), NEC Deutschland GmbH, 1993  (NB. Some dot matrix printers of the NEC Pinwriter series, namely the P3200/P3300 (P20/P30), P6200/P6300 (P60/P70), P9300 (P90), P7200/P7300 (P62/P72), P22Q/P32Q, P3800/P3900 (P42Q/P52Q), P1200/P1300 (P2Q/P3Q), P2000 (P2X) and P8000 (P72X), supported the installation of optional font EPROMs, where this encoding was included in ROM #8 "Polish".)

See also

• Kamenický encoding

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