TONT 34403 为什么默认的控制台代码页叫OEM？

原文链接：https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050829-00/?p=34403

Last year, we learned that the ANSI code page isn’t actually ANSI. Indeed, the OEM code page isn’t actually OEM either.

去年的时候，我们了解了一下 ANSI 代码页为什么实际上并不是 ANSI。实际上，OEM 代码页也并非 OEM。

Back in the days of MS-DOS, there was only one code page, namely, the code page that was provided by the original equipment manufacturer in the form of glyphs embedded in the character generator on the video card. When Windows came along, the so-called ANSI code page was introduced and the name “OEM” was used to refer to the MS-DOS code page. Michael Kaplan went into more detail earlier this year on the ANSI/OEM split.

在 MS-DOS 那个年代，实际上只有一个代码页，由原始设备制造商（original equipment manufacturer，OEM）以符号形式潜入在显示适配器的字符生成器中。后来有了 Windows 之后，就引入了所谓的 ANSI 代码页，而从 MS-DOS 继承而来的代码页就被叫做是 OEM 代码页了。Michael Kaplan 在其今年早些时候的博文中深入挖掘了一下这一分离过程（译注：链接已失效）。

Over the years, Windows has relied less and less on the character generator embedded in the video card, to the point where the term “OEM character set” no longer has anything to do with the original equipment manufacturer. It is just a convenient term to refer to “the character set used by MS-DOS and console programs.” Indeed, if you take a machine running US-English Windows (OEM code page 437) and install, say, Japanese Windows, then when you boot into Japanese Windows, you’ll find that you now have an OEM code page of 932.

多年过去，Windows 已经越来越少地依赖于潜入在显示适配器的字符生成器了，以至于『OEM字符集』这个概念也跟原始设备制造商越来越没什么关系了，而只是一种指代『由 MS-DOS 和控制台应用程序使用的字符集』的一种方便的称呼而已。实际上，如果你在一台运行美国英语版本 Windows（OEM代码页437）的机器上安装一个，比如说，日文版的 Windows，等你进入系统之后，就会发现系统当前的字符集是 OEM 932了。