comparison man/mule.texi @ 26140:068f7ad41d40

Describe new functions and variables for locales.

26139:ca31ffbed318

@cindex international scripts
@cindex multibyte characters
@cindex encoding of characters

@cindex Chinese
@cindex Devanagari
@cindex Hindi
@cindex Marathi
@cindex Ethiopian
@cindex Greek
@cindex IPA
@cindex Japanese
@cindex Korean
@cindex Lao
@cindex Russian
@cindex Thai
@cindex Tibetan
@cindex Vietnamese
  Emacs supports a wide variety of international character sets,
including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopian, Greek, IPA, Japanese, Korean,
Lao, Russian, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts.  These features
have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as MULE (for
``MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs'')

@menu
* International Intro::     Basic concepts of multibyte characters.

incoming mail, netnews, and any other text you read into Emacs.  It may
also specify the default coding system to use when you create a file.
Each language environment also specifies a default input method.

@findex set-language-environment
  The way to select a language environment is with the command @kbd{M-x
set-language-environment}.  It makes no difference which buffer is
current when you use this command, because the effects apply globally to
the Emacs session.  The supported language environments include:

@quotation
Chinese-BIG5, Chinese-CNS, Chinese-GB, Cyrillic-Alternativnyj,
Cyrillic-ISO, Cyrillic-KOI8, Devanagari, English, Ethiopic, Greek,
Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Latin-1, Latin-2, Latin-3, Latin-4,
Latin-5, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese.
@end quotation

  Some operating systems let you specify the language you are using by
setting locale environment variables.  Emacs handles one common special
case of this: if your locale name for character types contains the
string @samp{8859-@var{n}}, Emacs automatically selects the
corresponding language environment.

@kindex C-h L
@findex describe-language-environment
  To display information about the effects of a certain language
environment @var{lang-env}, use the command @kbd{C-h L @var{lang-env}

differently) under the new coding system.  If you try to save one of
these buffers under the visited file name, saving may use the wrong file
name, or it may get an error.  If such a problem happens, use @kbd{C-x
C-w} to specify a new file name for that buffer.

@node Fontsets
@section Fontsets
@cindex fontsets

  A font for X Windows typically defines shapes for one alphabet or

26140:068f7ad41d40

@cindex international scripts
@cindex multibyte characters
@cindex encoding of characters

@cindex Chinese
@cindex Cyrillic
@cindex Devanagari
@cindex Hindi
@cindex Marathi
@cindex Ethiopic
@cindex Greek
@cindex Hebrew
@cindex IPA
@cindex Japanese
@cindex Korean
@cindex Lao
@cindex Thai
@cindex Tibetan
@cindex Vietnamese
  Emacs supports a wide variety of international character sets,
including European variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Chinese,
Cyrillic, Devanagari (Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopic, Greek, Hebrew, IPA,
Japanese, Korean, Lao, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts.  These features
have been merged from the modified version of Emacs known as MULE (for
``MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs'')

@menu
* International Intro::     Basic concepts of multibyte characters.

incoming mail, netnews, and any other text you read into Emacs.  It may
also specify the default coding system to use when you create a file.
Each language environment also specifies a default input method.

@findex set-language-environment
@vindex current-language-environment
  To select a language environment, customize the option
@code{current-language-environment} or use the command @kbd{M-x
set-language-environment}.  It makes no difference which buffer is
current when you use this command, because the effects apply globally to
the Emacs session.  The supported language environments include:

@quotation
Chinese-BIG5, Chinese-CNS, Chinese-GB, Cyrillic-ALT, Cyrillic-ISO,
Cyrillic-KOI8, Czech, Devanagari, English, Ethiopic, German, Greek,
Hebrew, IPA, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Latin-1, Latin-2, Latin-3,
Latin-4, Latin-5, Latin-8, Latin-9, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Thai,
Tibetan, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
@end quotation

@findex set-locale-environment
@vindex locale-language-names
@vindex locale-charset-language-names
  Some operating systems let you specify the language you are using by
setting the locale environment variables @env{LC_ALL}, @env{LC_CTYPE},
and @env{LANG}; the first of these which is nonempty specifies your
locale.  Emacs handles this during startup by invoking the
@code{set-locale-environment} function, which matches your locale
against entries in the value of the variable
@code{locale-language-names} and selects the corresponding language
environment if a match is found.  But if your locale also matches an
entry in the variable @code{locale-charset-language-names}, this entry
is preferred if its character set disagrees.  For example, suppose the
locale @samp{en_GB.ISO8859-15} matches @code{"Latin-1"} in
@code{locale-language-names} and @code{"Latin-9"} in
@code{locale-charset-language-names}; since these two language
environments' character sets disagree, Emacs uses @code{"Latin-9"}.

@findex set-locale-environment
@vindex locale-preferred-coding-systems
  The @code{set-locale-environment} function normally uses the preferred
coding system established by the language environment to decode system
messages.  But if your locale matches an entry in the variable
@code{locale-preferred-coding-systems}, Emacs uses the corresponding
coding system instead.  For example, if the locale @samp{ja_JP.PCK}
matches @code{japanese-shift-jis} in
@code{locale-preferred-coding-systems}, Emacs uses that encoding even
though it might normally use @code{japanese-iso-8bit}.

  The environment chosen from the locale when Emacs starts is
overidden by any explicit use of the command
@code{set-language-environment} or customization of
@code{current-language-environment} in your init file.

@kindex C-h L
@findex describe-language-environment
  To display information about the effects of a certain language
environment @var{lang-env}, use the command @kbd{C-h L @var{lang-env}

differently) under the new coding system.  If you try to save one of
these buffers under the visited file name, saving may use the wrong file
name, or it may get an error.  If such a problem happens, use @kbd{C-x
C-w} to specify a new file name for that buffer.

@vindex locale-coding-system
  The variable @code{locale-coding-system} specifies a coding system to
use when encoding and decoding system strings such as system error
messages and @code{format-time-string} formats and time stamps.  This
coding system should be compatible with the underlying system's coding
system, which is normally specified by the first environment variable in
the list @env{LC_ALL}, @env{LC_CTYPE}, @env{LANG} whose value is
nonempty.

@node Fontsets
@section Fontsets
@cindex fontsets

  A font for X Windows typically defines shapes for one alphabet or