Windows-1257
code page
Windows-1257 (Windows Baltic) is an 8-bit, single-byte extended ASCII code page used to support the Estonian (which also used Windows-1252), Latvian and Lithuanian languages under Microsoft Windows. In Lithuania, it is standardised as LST 1590-3, alongside a modified variant named LST 1590-4.
The label Windows-1257 was registered with IANA in 1996, citing a publication of the specification in 1995 and inclusion with pan-European versions of Windows 95. The later ISO 8859-13 encoding (first published in 1998) is similar, but differs in reserving the range 0x80–9F for control characters, and accordingly locating certain quotation marks at codepoints 0xA1, 0xA5, 0xB4 and 0xFF instead (the latter two are used for spacing diacritics in Windows-1257). Windows-1257 is not compatible with the older ISO 8859-4 and ISO 8859-10 encodings. For the letters of the Estonian alphabet, Windows-1257 is compatible with IBM-922.
IBM uses code page 1257 (CCSID 1257, euro sign extended CCSID 5353, and the further extended CCSID 9449) for Windows-1257.
As with many other code pages, the languages supported in this code page can be supported in other code pages. The Estonian language can be written with Windows-1252. It is possible, but unusual, to write Polish, Slovene, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Danish and German using this code page.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Windows-1257” as code page. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as code page. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2583783. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1257, 1252, 1590 and 1996.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Windows-1257” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.