====== Code Page definition ======

Code page is another term for character encoding. It consists of a table of values that describes the character set for a particular language. \\
(c) [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page|en.wikipedia.org]]

A code page is a named mapping between sequences of sixteen-bit Unicode code units and sequences of bytes. \\
(c) [[http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/nio/charset/Charset.html|docs.oracle.com]]

===== 16 bit characters, e.g Orbit Vector file ====

Orbit uses the standard 16 bit Unicode characters to store attribute information in its native vector resource files ([[2210:technology:supported_formats:vector:ovf|*.ovf]], [[2210:technology:supported_formats:vector:ovt|*.ovt]]). The 64,536 Unicode characters guarantee support for the vast majority of all languages. The Orbit vector file doesn't need a charset or code page definition. \\
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode|

===== 8 bit characters, e.g. Esri shape file ====

The *.dbf file of an Esri shape file uses 8 bit codes to store characters (only 256 available characters). Depending the language a well defined set of characters is required to support the language specific characters. The first 128 characters (ASCII characters) are fix, the remaining 128 characters depend the language. This subset is also know as "charset" or "code page". 

The default Orbit charset is latin1 (ISO-LATIN-1, ISO 8859-1, Windows 1252). \\
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-1 \\
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252 

=== Supported Encodings ===

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/intl/encoding.doc.html

Examples 
  * Windows Hebrew, code ''Cp1255''
  * Windows Simplified Chinese, code ''MS936''

=== Code page definition file ===

A code page definition file (*.cpg) that accompany the vector resource file will be used to read 8 bit vector resources. \\
This <resource file name>.cpg file is an ASCII text file containing the name of the code page as only text string.

=== Orbit system configuration ===

The Orbit system configuration "system.charset" will be used to read (if no code page definition is set) and write (at all time)  all 8 bit vector resources, see [[2210:desktop:workspace:configurations|]].