Editing Windows-1256 (section)

{{Short description|Windows character set for Arabic}}
{{Infobox character encoding
| name     = Windows-1256
| mime     = windows-1256
| image    = 
| caption  = 
| alias    = cp1256 ([[Code page]] 1256)
| by       = [[Microsoft]]
| standard = [[WHATWG]] Encoding Standard
| lang     = [[Arabic language|Arabic]], [[Persian language|Persian]], [[Urdu]], [[English language|English]], [[French language|French]] (except capital letters with diacritics)
| status   =
| extends  = 
| prev     = 
| next     = 
| encodes  = 
| classification = [[extended ASCII]], [[Windows-125x]]
| otherrelated = 
}}
'''Windows-1256''' is a [[code page]] used under [[Microsoft Windows]] to write [[Arabic language|Arabic]] and other languages that use [[Arabic script]], such as [[Persian language|Persian]] and [[Urdu]].

This code page is ''neither'' compatible with [[ISO/IEC 8859-6]] nor the [[MacArabic encoding|MacArabic]] encoding.

Windows-1256 encodes every ''abstract'' single letter of the basic Arabic alphabet, not every concrete visual form of isolated, initial, medial, final or ligatured letter shape variants (i.e. it encodes characters, not glyphs). The Arabic letters in the C0-FF range are in Arabic alphabetic order, but some Latin characters are interspersed among them. These are some [[Windows-1252]] Latin characters used for [[French language|French]], since this European language has some historic relevance in former French colonies in North Africa such as [[Morocco]] and [[Algeria]]. This allowed French and Arabic text to be intermixed when using Windows-1256 without any need for code-page switching  (however, upper-case letters with diacritics were not included).

[[IBM]] uses '''code page 1256''' ([[CCSID]] 1256, [[euro sign]] extended CCSID 5352, and the further extended CCSID 9448 for some letters used in modern Persian and Urdu) for Windows-1256.<ref>{{cite web|title=Code page 1256 information document|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303235522/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/cp/cp01256.html|archive-date=2016-03-03|url=https://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/cp/cp01256.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=CCSID 1256 information document|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160327025533/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid1256.html|archive-date=2016-03-27|url=http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid1256.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=CCSID 5352 information document|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129223737/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid5352.html|archive-date=2014-11-29|url=http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid5352.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=CCSID 9448 information document|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129210515/http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid9448.html|archive-date=2014-11-29|url=http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid9448.html}}</ref>

[[Unicode]] is preferred over Windows-1256 in modern applications, especially on the Internet, where the dominant [[UTF-8]] encoding is most used for web pages, including for Arabic (see also [[Arabic script in Unicode]], for complete coverage, unlike for e.g. Windows-1256 or [[ISO/IEC 8859-6]] that do not cover extras). Less than 0.03% of all web pages use Windows-1256 in October 2022,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/character_encoding|title=Historical trends in the usage of character encodings for websites, October 2022|website=w3techs.com}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://w3techs.com/faq|title=Frequently Asked Questions|website=w3techs.com}}</ref> and while that encoding is mostly used for Arabic, and second-most popular for it, it is only used for 1.6% of the Arabic text on the web.