Windows code page

Windows code pages are sets of characters or code pages (known as character encodings in other operating systems) used in Microsoft Windows from the 1980s and 1990s. Windows code pages were gradually superseded when Unicode was implemented in Windows,^{[citation needed]} although they are still supported both within Windows and other platforms, and still apply when Alt code shortcuts are used.

Current Windows versions support Unicode, new Windows applications should use Unicode and not 8-bit character encodings.^[1].

There are two groups of system code pages in Windows systems: OEM and Windows-native ("ANSI") code pages. (ANSI is the American National Standards Institute.) Code pages in both of these groups are extended ASCII code pages. Additional code pages are supported by standard Windows conversion routines, but not used as either type of system code page.