DIN 66303

The German standard DIN 66303 is a character set standard, which is used for character encoding in computer systems. The standard DIN 66303 bears the title "Information Technology: 8-Bit-Code" and was established in November 1986 (DIN 66303:1986-11). The most recent edition is from June 2000 (DIN 66303:2000-06).

The character set of the 2000 edition (DIN 66303:2000-06) corresponds in layout and repertoire to the international standard ISO/IEC 8859-1. The still often-used forerunner DIN 66303:1986-11 specified two code pages, the General Reference Version of the 8-Bit-Code (Allgemeine Referenz-Version, ARV8) and the German Reference Version of the 8-Bit-Code (Deutsche Referenz-Version, DRV8).

DRV8 is an extension of DIN 66003 (the German adaptation of ISO/IEC 646) with European characters, whereas ARV8 represents a re-arrangement of the DIN 66003 characters to their internationally used (ISO-8859-1 or DEC MCS) code points.

DIN 66303:1986-11 – German Reference Version of the 8-bit Code (DRV8)
The DRV8 code corresponds to ISO-8859-1 with certain characters swapped, such as to make it an extension of DIN 66003 as opposed to of ASCII.

{{legend|#FFD|Differences from ISO-8859-1}}

DIN 66303:1986-11 – General Reference Version of the 8-Bit-Code (ARV8)
The name "ARV8" is associated with ISO-8859-1 without rearrangement. Shown below is the common subset of the Latin parts of ISO 8859, which corresponds to the definition of ARV8 in the 1986 edition of DIN 66303.