Draft:Romanian Standardization Association

The Romanian Standardization Association (Romanian: Asociația de Standardizare din România, abbreviated ASRO) is the national body responsible for standardization in Romania. It is a member of international and European standardization organizations and coordinates the development, implementation, and promotion of Romanian standards.

Overview

• Abbreviation: ASRO
• Founded: 1998
• Headquarters: Bucharest, Romania
• Type: National standards body
• Website: www.asro.ro

History and Role

ASRO was founded in 1998, taking over responsibilities from the former Romanian Standards Institute (Institutul Român de Standardizare, IRS). It acts as the national representative in international standardization organizations and is a full member of:

• ISO – International Organization for Standardization
• IEC – International Electrotechnical Commission
• CEN – European Committee for Standardization
• CENELEC – European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization

ASRO coordinates the development of national standards (SR), harmonizes them with European and international standards, and provides related training and publication services.

Involvement in Unicode Standardization – The Ș/ș Character

A significant contribution of ASRO in digital standards is tied to the correct representation of the Romanian alphabet in character encoding systems.

The Romanian alphabet includes two distinct letters: S-comma (Ș, ș) and T-comma (Ț, ț). However, early digital character sets like ISO/IEC 8859-2 and Windows-1250 lacked support for these letters. Instead, their visually similar substitutes S-cedilla (Ş, ş) and T-cedilla (Ţ, ţ) were used, which are not accurate representations of Romanian orthography.

This substitution was widespread in early computing due to limitations in Unicode prior to version 3.0. Although S-cedilla (Ş, ş) was included in Unicode since version 1.1 (1993), the correct S-comma was not initially supported. In low-resolution displays or printouts, the difference between the comma and cedilla diacritics was often negligible, contributing to the confusion.

In 1999, the Romanian Standardization Association formally requested the inclusion of the correct S-comma and T-comma characters in the Unicode Standard. These characters were subsequently added in Unicode 3.0 under the Latin Extended-B block:

• U+0218 – Latin capital letter S with comma below (Ș)
• U+0219 – Latin small letter s with comma below (ș)

Despite this advancement, early versions of Microsoft Windows, including retail versions of Windows XP, did not support these characters. Later updates, including the European Union Expansion Font Update, gradually improved their availability.

Even today, both S-comma and S-cedilla may still be used interchangeably in digital and print Romanian, although the former is now the correct standard.

Unicode Details

• Unicode Name: Latin capital/small letter S with comma below
• Code points:
  • U+0218 – Ș – Ș
  • U+0219 – ș – ș
• Block: Latin Extended-B
• HTML entities:
  • Ș = Ș
  • ș = ș