Windows-1255 Windows-1255 (CP-1255, Hebrew) Windows Code Pages
The Windows-native Hebrew code page — like ISO-8859-8, doesn't handle right-to-left text direction, which remains a separate rendering concern.
What it is
Windows-1255 is Microsoft's Hebrew code page, the Windows-native counterpart to ISO-8859-8. As with the ISO variant, character encoding handles which letters are present, while right-to-left text direction and bidirectional layout are entirely separate rendering-layer concerns that neither encoding addresses on its own.
Byte structure
| Byte range | Content |
|---|---|
| 0x00–0x7F | Identical to ASCII |
| 0x80–0x9F | Printable characters (curly quotes, dashes) |
| 0xA0–0xFF | Hebrew letters and symbols, largely shared with ISO-8859-8 |
Why your text is garbled (symptom → cause)
| Symptom | Likely cause |
|---|---|
| Hebrew text unreadable | Windows-1255 vs. ISO-8859-8 or another encoding mismatch |
| Correctly decoded Hebrew text displays in wrong reading order | Bidirectional text rendering issue, not an encoding problem |
Compatibility & gotchas
- The Windows-native counterpart to ISO-8859-8, more commonly deployed on Windows systems for Hebrew text historically.
- Bidirectional rendering remains a separate concern — same caveat as ISO-8859-8; correct decoding doesn't guarantee correct display order for mixed Hebrew/Latin content.
Fixing it
- Command-line conversion:
iconv -f WINDOWS-1255 -t UTF-8 input.txt -o output.txt
Comparison
| Encoding | Key difference from Windows-1255 |
|---|---|
| ISO-8859-8 | Same base Hebrew letter coverage, differs in the 0x80–0x9F range |
| UTF-8 | Full Unicode coverage; modern rendering stacks generally have better bidi support |
FAQ
Does Windows-1255 handle Hebrew text direction automatically?
No — like ISO-8859-8, it only encodes which characters are present. Right-to-left rendering and bidirectional layout require separate support in the display/rendering layer.
Fun fact
Hebrew and Arabic both needed the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm to properly standardize mixed-direction text handling — a problem neither Windows-1255 nor ISO-8859-8 attempted to solve, since both predate that later, more comprehensive approach to the underlying rendering challenge.