Mac OS Roman
MIME / IANAmacintosh
Language(s)English, various others
Created byApple Computer, Inc.
ClassificationExtended ASCII, Mac OS script
ExtendsASCII, Macintosh character set

Mac OS Roman is a character encoding created by Apple Computer, Inc. for use by Macintosh computers.[1] It is suitable for representing text in English and several other Western languages. Mac OS Roman encodes 256 characters, the first 128 of which are identical to ASCII, with the remaining characters including mathematical symbols, diacritics, and additional punctuation marks. Mac OS Roman is an extension of the original Macintosh character set, which encoded only 217 characters.[1] Full support for Mac OS Roman first appeared in System 6.0.4, released in 1989,[2] and the encoding is still supported in current versions of macOS, though the standard character encoding is now UTF-8. Apple modified Mac OS Roman in 1998 with the release of Mac OS 8.5 by replacing the currency sign with the euro sign,[3] but otherwise the encoding has been unchanged since its release.

Character set

The following table shows how characters are encoded in Mac OS Roman. The row and column headings give the first and second digit of the hexadecimal code for each character in the table.

Mac OS Roman[4][5]
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0x NUL SOH STX ETX EOT ENQ ACK BEL  BS   HT   LF   VT   FF   CR   SO   SI  
1x DLE DC1 DC2 DC3 DC4 NAK SYN ETB CAN  EM  SUB ESC  FS   GS   RS   US 
2x  SP  ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /
3x 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?
4x @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O
5x P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _
6x ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o
7x p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~ DEL
8x Ä Å Ç É Ñ Ö Ü á à â ä ã å ç é è
9x ê ë í ì î ï ñ ó ò ô ö õ ú ù û ü
Ax † ° ¢ £ § • ß ® © ™ ´ ¨ ≠ Æ Ø
Bx ∞ ± ≤ ≥ ¥ µ ∂ ∑ ∏ π ∫ ª º Ω[a] æ ø
Cx ¿ ¡ ¬ √ ƒ ≈ ∆ « » … NBSP À Ã Õ Œ œ
Dx – — “ ” ‘ ’ ÷ ◊ ÿ Ÿ ⁄ €[b] ‹ › fi fl
Ex ‡ · ‚ „ ‰ Â Ê Á Ë È Í Î Ï Ì Ó Ô
Fx [c] Ò Ú Û Ù ı ˆ ˜ ¯ ˘ ˙ ˚ ¸ ˝ ˛ ˇ
  1. ^ Prior to December 1997, Apple's mapping published on Unicode.org mapped this character to U+2126 OHM SIGN.[5]
  2. ^ Before Mac OS 8.5, the character at position 0xDB was the generic currency sign (¤).[5]
  3. ^ The character at position 0xF0 is a solid Apple logo. Apple uses Unicode character U+F8FF in the Corporate Private Use Area for this character, but it may not be supported on non-Apple systems.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Apple Computer, Inc. (1993). Inside Macintosh: Text (PDF). p. 1-53. ISBN 0-201-63298-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-12-11. Retrieved July 10, 2021.
  2. ^ Apple Computer, Inc. (1991). Inside Macintosh, Volume VI. p. 14-104. ISBN 0-201-57755-0.
  3. ^ Apple Computer, Inc. (September 14, 1998). "Technical Note TN1104: The Euro Currency Symbol". Retrieved July 10, 2021.
  4. ^ Inside Macintosh: Text (PDF). Apple Computer, Inc. 1993. pp. 1–54, A-5–A-18. ISBN 0-201-63298-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-12-11. Retrieved July 10, 2021.
  5. ^ a b c "ROMAN.TXT". Unicode.org. Apple Computer, Inc. 5 April 2005. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
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