comparison man/msdog-xtra.texi @ 70465:5bed914b8a89

(MS-DOS, MS-DOS Keyboard, MS-DOS Mouse) (MS-DOS Display, MS-DOS File Names, MS-DOS Printing) (MS-DOS and MULE, MS-DOS Processes) [ifnottex]: Conditional xref's for on-line manual.

70464:35a93621d68f

@cindex MS-DOG
@cindex MS-DOS peculiarities

  This section briefly describes the peculiarities of using Emacs on
the MS-DOS ``operating system'' (also known as ``MS-DOG'').
Information about Emacs and Microsoft's current operating system
Windows (also known as ``Losedows) is in the main Emacs manual
(@pxref{Microsoft Systems,,, emacs, the Emacs Manual}).

  If you build Emacs for MS-DOS, the binary will also run on Windows
3.X, Windows NT, Windows 9X/ME, Windows 2000, or OS/2 as a DOS
application; all of this chapter applies for all of those systems, if
you use an Emacs that was built for MS-DOS.

  @xref{Text and Binary,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}, for information
about Emacs' special handling of text files under MS-DOS (and
Windows).

@menu
* Keyboard: MS-DOS Keyboard.   Keyboard conventions on MS-DOS.
* Mouse: MS-DOS Mouse.         Mouse conventions on MS-DOS.
* Display: MS-DOS Display.     Fonts, frames and display size on MS-DOS.

@cindex quitting on MS-DOS
  Emacs built for MS-DOS recognizes @kbd{C-@key{BREAK}} as a quit
character, just like @kbd{C-g}.  This is because Emacs cannot detect
that you have typed @kbd{C-g} until it is ready for more input.  As a
consequence, you cannot use @kbd{C-g} to stop a running command
(@pxref{Quitting,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).  By contrast,
@kbd{C-@key{BREAK}} @emph{is} detected as soon as you type it (as
@kbd{C-g} is on other systems), so it can be used to stop a running
command and for emergency escape (@pxref{Emergency Escape,,,emacs, the
Emacs Manual}).

@cindex Meta (under MS-DOS)
@cindex Hyper (under MS-DOS)
@cindex Super (under MS-DOS)
@vindex dos-super-key

@subsection Mouse Usage on MS-DOS

@cindex mouse support under MS-DOS
  Emacs on MS-DOS supports a mouse (on the default terminal only).
The mouse commands work as documented, including those that use menus
and the menu bar (@pxref{Menu Bar,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).  Scroll
bars don't work in MS-DOS Emacs.  PC mice usually have only two
buttons; these act as @kbd{Mouse-1} and @kbd{Mouse-2}, but if you
press both of them together, that has the effect of @kbd{Mouse-3}.  If
the mouse does have 3 buttons, Emacs detects that at startup, and all
the 3 buttons function normally, as on X.

  Help strings for menu-bar and pop-up menus are displayed in the echo
area when the mouse pointer moves across the menu items.  Highlighting
of mouse-sensitive text (@pxref{Mouse References,,,emacs, the Emacs
Manual}) is also supported.

@cindex mouse, set number of buttons
@findex msdos-set-mouse-buttons
  Some versions of mouse drivers don't report the number of mouse
buttons correctly.  For example, mice with a wheel report that they

@cindex Windows clipboard support
  Emacs built for MS-DOS supports clipboard operations when it runs on
Windows.  Commands that put text on the kill ring, or yank text from
the ring, check the Windows clipboard first, just as Emacs does on the
X Window System (@pxref{Mouse Commands,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
Only the primary selection and the cut buffer are supported by MS-DOS
Emacs on Windows; the secondary selection always appears as empty.

  Due to the way clipboard access is implemented by Windows, the
length of text you can put into the clipboard is limited by the amount

  Display on MS-DOS cannot use font variants, like bold or italic, but
it does support multiple faces, each of which can specify a foreground
and a background color.  Therefore, you can get the full functionality
of Emacs packages that use fonts (such as @code{font-lock}, Enriched
Text mode, and others) by defining the relevant faces to use different
colors.  Use the @code{list-colors-display} command (@pxref{Frame
Parameters,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}) and the
@code{list-faces-display} command (@pxref{Faces,,,emacs, the Emacs
Manual}) to see what colors and faces are available and what they look
like.

  @xref{MS-DOS and MULE}, later in this chapter, for information on
how Emacs displays glyphs and characters that aren't supported by the
native font built into the DOS display.

@cindex cursor shape on MS-DOS
  When Emacs starts, it changes the cursor shape to a solid box.  This
is for compatibility with other systems, where the box cursor is the
default in Emacs.  This default shape can be changed to a bar by
specifying the @code{cursor-type} parameter in the variable
@code{default-frame-alist} (@pxref{Creating Frames,,,emacs, the Emacs
Manual}).  The MS-DOS terminal doesn't support a vertical-bar cursor,
so the bar cursor is horizontal, and the @code{@var{width}} parameter,
if specified by the frame parameters, actually determines its height.
For this reason, the @code{bar} and @code{hbar} cursor types produce
the same effect on MS-DOS.  As an extension, the bar cursor
specification can include the starting scan line of the cursor as well

begins at the top of the character cell.

@cindex frames on MS-DOS
  The MS-DOS terminal can only display a single frame at a time.  The
Emacs frame facilities work on MS-DOS much as they do on text-only
terminals (@pxref{Frames,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).  When you run
Emacs from a DOS window on MS-Windows, you can make the visible frame
smaller than the full screen, but Emacs still cannot display more than
a single frame at a time.

@cindex frame size under MS-DOS
@findex mode4350
@findex mode25
  The @code{mode4350} command switches the display to 43 or 50

characters, plus optionally a period and three more characters.  Emacs
knows enough about these limitations to handle file names that were
meant for other operating systems.  For instance, leading dots
@samp{.}  in file names are invalid in MS-DOS, so Emacs transparently
converts them to underscores @samp{_}; thus your default init file
(@pxref{Init File,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}) is called @file{_emacs}
on MS-DOS.  Excess characters before or after the period are generally
ignored by MS-DOS itself; thus, if you visit the file
@file{LongFileName.EvenLongerExtension}, you will silently get
@file{longfile.eve}, but Emacs will still display the long file name
on the mode line.  Other than that, it's up to you to specify file
names which are valid under MS-DOS; the transparent conversion as
described above only works on file names built into Emacs.

@cindex backup file names on MS-DOS
  The above restrictions on the file names on MS-DOS make it almost
impossible to construct the name of a backup file (@pxref{Backup
Names,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}) without losing some of the original
file name characters.  For example, the name of a backup file for
@file{docs.txt} is @file{docs.tx~} even if single backup is used.

@cindex file names under Windows 95/NT
@cindex long file names in DOS box under Windows 95/NT
  If you run Emacs as a DOS application under Windows 9X, Windows ME, or
Windows 2000, you can turn on support for long file names.  If you do

@node MS-DOS Printing
@subsection Printing and MS-DOS

  Printing commands, such as @code{lpr-buffer}
(@pxref{Printing,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}) and
@code{ps-print-buffer} (@pxref{PostScript,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual})
can work on MS-DOS by sending the output to one of the printer ports,
if a Posix-style @code{lpr} program is unavailable.  The same Emacs
variables control printing on all systems, but in some cases they have
different default values on MS-DOS.

@xref{MS-Windows Printing,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}, for details.

  Some printers expect DOS codepage encoding of non-@acronym{ASCII} text, even
though they are connected to a Windows machine which uses a different
encoding for the same locale.  For example, in the Latin-1 locale, DOS
uses codepage 850 whereas Windows uses codepage 1252.  @xref{MS-DOS and

@node MS-DOS and MULE
@subsection International Support on MS-DOS
@cindex international support @r{(MS-DOS)}

  Emacs on MS-DOS supports the same international character sets as it
does on GNU, Unix and other platforms (@pxref{International,,,emacs,
the Emacs Manual}), including coding systems for converting between
the different character sets.  However, due to incompatibilities
between MS-DOS/MS-Windows and other systems, there are several
DOS-specific aspects of this support that you should be aware of.
This section describes these aspects.

  The description below is largely specific to the MS-DOS port of
Emacs, especially where it talks about practical implications for
Emacs users.  For other operating systems, see the @file{code-pages.el}
package, which implements support for MS-DOS- and MS-Windows-specific

behaves.}.  Much the same limitation applies when you run DOS
executables on other systems such as MS-Windows.

@cindex unibyte operation @r{(MS-DOS)}
  If you invoke Emacs on MS-DOS with the @samp{--unibyte} option
(@pxref{Initial Options,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}), Emacs does not
perform any conversion of non-@acronym{ASCII} characters.  Instead, it
reads and writes any non-@acronym{ASCII} characters verbatim, and
sends their 8-bit codes to the display verbatim.  Thus, unibyte Emacs
on MS-DOS supports the current codepage, whatever it may be, but
cannot even represent any other characters.

@vindex dos-codepage
  For multibyte operation on MS-DOS, Emacs needs to know which
characters the chosen DOS codepage can display.  So it queries the
system shortly after startup to get the chosen codepage number, and

@cindex mode line @r{(MS-DOS)}
  All the @code{cp@var{nnn}} coding systems use the letter @samp{D}
(for ``DOS'') as their mode-line mnemonic.  Since both the terminal
coding system and the default coding system for file I/O are set to
the proper @code{cp@var{nnn}} coding system at startup, it is normal
for the mode line on MS-DOS to begin with @samp{-DD\-}.  @xref{Mode
Line,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}.  Far-Eastern DOS terminals do not use
the @code{cp@var{nnn}} coding systems, and thus their initial mode
line looks like the Emacs default.

  Since the codepage number also indicates which script you are using,
Emacs automatically runs @code{set-language-environment} to select the
language environment for that script (@pxref{Language
Environments,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).

  If a buffer contains a character belonging to some other ISO 8859
character set, not the one that the chosen DOS codepage supports, Emacs
displays it using a sequence of @acronym{ASCII} characters.  For example, if the
current codepage doesn't have a glyph for the letter @samp{@`o} (small

  Emacs supports many other characters sets aside from ISO 8859, but it
cannot display them on MS-DOS.  So if one of these multibyte characters
appears in a buffer, Emacs on MS-DOS displays them as specified by the
@code{dos-unsupported-character-glyph} variable; by default, this glyph
is an empty triangle.  Use the @kbd{C-u C-x =} command to display the
actual code and character set of such characters.  @xref{Position
Info,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}.

@findex codepage-setup
  By default, Emacs defines a coding system to support the current
codepage.  To define a coding system for some other codepage (e.g., to
visit a file written on a DOS machine in another country), use the
@kbd{M-x codepage-setup} command.  It prompts for the 3-digit code of
the codepage, with completion, then creates the coding system for the
specified codepage.  You can then use the new coding system to read and
write files, but you must specify it explicitly for the file command
when you want to use it (@pxref{Text Coding,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).

  These coding systems are also useful for visiting a file encoded using
a DOS codepage, using Emacs running on some other operating system.

@cindex MS-Windows codepages

  Instead of the Shell mode, which doesn't work on MS-DOS, you can use
the @kbd{M-x eshell} command.  This invokes the Eshell package that
implements a Posix-like shell entirely in Emacs Lisp.

  By contrast, Emacs compiled as a native Windows application
@strong{does} support asynchronous subprocesses.  @xref{Windows
Processes,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}.

@cindex printing under MS-DOS
  Printing commands, such as @code{lpr-buffer}
(@pxref{Printing,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}) and
@code{ps-print-buffer} (@pxref{PostScript,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}),
work in MS-DOS by sending the output to one of the printer ports.
@xref{MS-DOS Printing,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}.

  When you run a subprocess synchronously on MS-DOS, make sure the
program terminates and does not try to read keyboard input.  If the
program does not terminate on its own, you will be unable to terminate
it, because MS-DOS provides no general way to terminate a process.

70465:5bed914b8a89

@cindex MS-DOG
@cindex MS-DOS peculiarities

  This section briefly describes the peculiarities of using Emacs on
the MS-DOS ``operating system'' (also known as ``MS-DOG'').
@iftex
Information about Emacs and Microsoft's current operating system
Windows (also known as ``Losedows) is in the main Emacs manual
(@pxref{Microsoft Systems,,, emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
@end iftex
@ifnottex
Information about peculiarities common to MS-DOS and Microsoft's
current operating systems Windows (also known as ``Losedows) is in
@ref{Microsoft Windows}.
@end ifnottex

  If you build Emacs for MS-DOS, the binary will also run on Windows
3.X, Windows NT, Windows 9X/ME, Windows 2000, or OS/2 as a DOS
application; all of this chapter applies for all of those systems, if
you use an Emacs that was built for MS-DOS.

@iftex
  @xref{Text and Binary,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}, for information
@end iftex
@ifnottex
  @xref{Text and Binary}, for information
@end ifnottex
about Emacs' special handling of text files under MS-DOS (and Windows).

@menu
* Keyboard: MS-DOS Keyboard.   Keyboard conventions on MS-DOS.
* Mouse: MS-DOS Mouse.         Mouse conventions on MS-DOS.
* Display: MS-DOS Display.     Fonts, frames and display size on MS-DOS.

@cindex quitting on MS-DOS
  Emacs built for MS-DOS recognizes @kbd{C-@key{BREAK}} as a quit
character, just like @kbd{C-g}.  This is because Emacs cannot detect
that you have typed @kbd{C-g} until it is ready for more input.  As a
consequence, you cannot use @kbd{C-g} to stop a running command
@iftex
(@pxref{Quitting,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Quitting}).
@end ifnottex
By contrast, @kbd{C-@key{BREAK}} @emph{is} detected as soon as you
type it (as @kbd{C-g} is on other systems), so it can be used to stop
a running command and for emergency escape
@iftex
(@pxref{Emergency Escape,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Emergency Escape}).
@end ifnottex

@cindex Meta (under MS-DOS)
@cindex Hyper (under MS-DOS)
@cindex Super (under MS-DOS)
@vindex dos-super-key

@subsection Mouse Usage on MS-DOS

@cindex mouse support under MS-DOS
  Emacs on MS-DOS supports a mouse (on the default terminal only).
The mouse commands work as documented, including those that use menus
and the menu bar
@iftex
(@pxref{Menu Bar,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Menu Bar}).
@end ifnottex
 Scroll bars don't work in MS-DOS Emacs.  PC mice usually have only
two buttons; these act as @kbd{Mouse-1} and @kbd{Mouse-2}, but if you
press both of them together, that has the effect of @kbd{Mouse-3}.  If
the mouse does have 3 buttons, Emacs detects that at startup, and all
the 3 buttons function normally, as on X.

  Help strings for menu-bar and pop-up menus are displayed in the echo
area when the mouse pointer moves across the menu items.  Highlighting
of mouse-sensitive text
@iftex
(@pxref{Mouse References,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual})
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Mouse References})
@end ifnottex
is also supported.

@cindex mouse, set number of buttons
@findex msdos-set-mouse-buttons
  Some versions of mouse drivers don't report the number of mouse
buttons correctly.  For example, mice with a wheel report that they

@cindex Windows clipboard support
  Emacs built for MS-DOS supports clipboard operations when it runs on
Windows.  Commands that put text on the kill ring, or yank text from
the ring, check the Windows clipboard first, just as Emacs does on the
X Window System
@iftex
(@pxref{Mouse Commands,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Mouse Commands}).
@end ifnottex
Only the primary selection and the cut buffer are supported by MS-DOS
Emacs on Windows; the secondary selection always appears as empty.

  Due to the way clipboard access is implemented by Windows, the
length of text you can put into the clipboard is limited by the amount

  Display on MS-DOS cannot use font variants, like bold or italic, but
it does support multiple faces, each of which can specify a foreground
and a background color.  Therefore, you can get the full functionality
of Emacs packages that use fonts (such as @code{font-lock}, Enriched
Text mode, and others) by defining the relevant faces to use different
colors.  Use the @code{list-colors-display} command
@iftex
(@pxref{Frame Parameters,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual})
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Frame Parameters})
@end ifnottex
and the @code{list-faces-display} command
@iftex
(@pxref{Faces,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual})
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Faces})
@end ifnottex
to see what colors and faces are available and what they look like.

  @xref{MS-DOS and MULE}, later in this chapter, for information on
how Emacs displays glyphs and characters that aren't supported by the
native font built into the DOS display.

@cindex cursor shape on MS-DOS
  When Emacs starts, it changes the cursor shape to a solid box.  This
is for compatibility with other systems, where the box cursor is the
default in Emacs.  This default shape can be changed to a bar by
specifying the @code{cursor-type} parameter in the variable
@code{default-frame-alist}
@iftex
(@pxref{Creating Frames,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Creating Frames}).
@end ifnottex
The MS-DOS terminal doesn't support a vertical-bar cursor,
so the bar cursor is horizontal, and the @code{@var{width}} parameter,
if specified by the frame parameters, actually determines its height.
For this reason, the @code{bar} and @code{hbar} cursor types produce
the same effect on MS-DOS.  As an extension, the bar cursor
specification can include the starting scan line of the cursor as well

begins at the top of the character cell.

@cindex frames on MS-DOS
  The MS-DOS terminal can only display a single frame at a time.  The
Emacs frame facilities work on MS-DOS much as they do on text-only
terminals
@iftex
(@pxref{Frames,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Frames}).
@end ifnottex
When you run Emacs from a DOS window on MS-Windows, you can make the
visible frame smaller than the full screen, but Emacs still cannot
display more than a single frame at a time.

@cindex frame size under MS-DOS
@findex mode4350
@findex mode25
  The @code{mode4350} command switches the display to 43 or 50

characters, plus optionally a period and three more characters.  Emacs
knows enough about these limitations to handle file names that were
meant for other operating systems.  For instance, leading dots
@samp{.}  in file names are invalid in MS-DOS, so Emacs transparently
converts them to underscores @samp{_}; thus your default init file
@iftex
(@pxref{Init File,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual})
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Init File})
@end ifnottex
is called @file{_emacs} on MS-DOS.  Excess characters before or after
the period are generally ignored by MS-DOS itself; thus, if you visit
the file @file{LongFileName.EvenLongerExtension}, you will silently
get @file{longfile.eve}, but Emacs will still display the long file
name on the mode line.  Other than that, it's up to you to specify
file names which are valid under MS-DOS; the transparent conversion as
described above only works on file names built into Emacs.

@cindex backup file names on MS-DOS
  The above restrictions on the file names on MS-DOS make it almost
impossible to construct the name of a backup file
@iftex
(@pxref{Backup Names,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual})
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Backup Names})
@end ifnottex
without losing some of the original file name characters.  For
example, the name of a backup file for @file{docs.txt} is
@file{docs.tx~} even if single backup is used.

@cindex file names under Windows 95/NT
@cindex long file names in DOS box under Windows 95/NT
  If you run Emacs as a DOS application under Windows 9X, Windows ME, or
Windows 2000, you can turn on support for long file names.  If you do

@node MS-DOS Printing
@subsection Printing and MS-DOS

  Printing commands, such as @code{lpr-buffer}
@iftex
(@pxref{Printing,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}) and @code{ps-print-buffer}
(@pxref{PostScript,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual})
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Printing}) and @code{ps-print-buffer} (@pxref{PostScript})
@end ifnottex
can work on MS-DOS by sending the output to one of the printer ports,
if a Posix-style @code{lpr} program is unavailable.  The same Emacs
variables control printing on all systems, but in some cases they have
different default values on MS-DOS.

@iftex
@xref{Windows Printing,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual},
@end iftex
@ifnottex
@xref{Windows Printing},
@end ifnottex
for details about setting up printing to a networked printer.

  Some printers expect DOS codepage encoding of non-@acronym{ASCII} text, even
though they are connected to a Windows machine which uses a different
encoding for the same locale.  For example, in the Latin-1 locale, DOS
uses codepage 850 whereas Windows uses codepage 1252.  @xref{MS-DOS and

@node MS-DOS and MULE
@subsection International Support on MS-DOS
@cindex international support @r{(MS-DOS)}

  Emacs on MS-DOS supports the same international character sets as it
does on GNU, Unix and other platforms
@iftex
(@pxref{International,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}),
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{International}),
@end ifnottex
including coding systems for converting between the different
character sets.  However, due to incompatibilities between
MS-DOS/MS-Windows and other systems, there are several DOS-specific
aspects of this support that you should be aware of.  This section
describes these aspects.

  The description below is largely specific to the MS-DOS port of
Emacs, especially where it talks about practical implications for
Emacs users.  For other operating systems, see the @file{code-pages.el}
package, which implements support for MS-DOS- and MS-Windows-specific

behaves.}.  Much the same limitation applies when you run DOS
executables on other systems such as MS-Windows.

@cindex unibyte operation @r{(MS-DOS)}
  If you invoke Emacs on MS-DOS with the @samp{--unibyte} option
@iftex
(@pxref{Initial Options,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}),
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Initial Options}),
@end ifnottex
Emacs does not perform any conversion of non-@acronym{ASCII}
characters.  Instead, it reads and writes any non-@acronym{ASCII}
characters verbatim, and sends their 8-bit codes to the display
verbatim.  Thus, unibyte Emacs on MS-DOS supports the current
codepage, whatever it may be, but cannot even represent any other
characters.

@vindex dos-codepage
  For multibyte operation on MS-DOS, Emacs needs to know which
characters the chosen DOS codepage can display.  So it queries the
system shortly after startup to get the chosen codepage number, and

@cindex mode line @r{(MS-DOS)}
  All the @code{cp@var{nnn}} coding systems use the letter @samp{D}
(for ``DOS'') as their mode-line mnemonic.  Since both the terminal
coding system and the default coding system for file I/O are set to
the proper @code{cp@var{nnn}} coding system at startup, it is normal
for the mode line on MS-DOS to begin with @samp{-DD\-}.
@iftex
@xref{Mode Line,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}.
@end iftex
@ifnottex
@xref{Mode Line}.
@end ifnottex
Far-Eastern DOS terminals do not use the @code{cp@var{nnn}} coding
systems, and thus their initial mode line looks like the Emacs
default.

  Since the codepage number also indicates which script you are using,
Emacs automatically runs @code{set-language-environment} to select the
language environment for that script
@iftex
(@pxref{Language Environments,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Language Environments}).
@end ifnottex

  If a buffer contains a character belonging to some other ISO 8859
character set, not the one that the chosen DOS codepage supports, Emacs
displays it using a sequence of @acronym{ASCII} characters.  For example, if the
current codepage doesn't have a glyph for the letter @samp{@`o} (small

  Emacs supports many other characters sets aside from ISO 8859, but it
cannot display them on MS-DOS.  So if one of these multibyte characters
appears in a buffer, Emacs on MS-DOS displays them as specified by the
@code{dos-unsupported-character-glyph} variable; by default, this glyph
is an empty triangle.  Use the @kbd{C-u C-x =} command to display the
actual code and character set of such characters.
@iftex
@xref{Position Info,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}.
@end iftex
@ifnottex
@xref{Position Info}.
@end ifnottex

@findex codepage-setup
  By default, Emacs defines a coding system to support the current
codepage.  To define a coding system for some other codepage (e.g., to
visit a file written on a DOS machine in another country), use the
@kbd{M-x codepage-setup} command.  It prompts for the 3-digit code of
the codepage, with completion, then creates the coding system for the
specified codepage.  You can then use the new coding system to read and
write files, but you must specify it explicitly for the file command
when you want to use it
@iftex
(@pxref{Text Coding,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}).
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Text Coding}).
@end ifnottex

  These coding systems are also useful for visiting a file encoded using
a DOS codepage, using Emacs running on some other operating system.

@cindex MS-Windows codepages

  Instead of the Shell mode, which doesn't work on MS-DOS, you can use
the @kbd{M-x eshell} command.  This invokes the Eshell package that
implements a Posix-like shell entirely in Emacs Lisp.

  By contrast, Emacs compiled as a native Windows application
@strong{does} support asynchronous subprocesses.
@iftex
@xref{Windows Processes,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}.
@end iftex
@ifnottex
@xref{Windows Processes}.
@end ifnottex

@cindex printing under MS-DOS
  Printing commands, such as @code{lpr-buffer}
@iftex
(@pxref{Printing,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}) and
@code{ps-print-buffer} (@pxref{PostScript,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}),
work in MS-DOS by sending the output to one of the printer ports.
@xref{MS-DOS Printing,,,emacs, the Emacs Manual}.
@end iftex
@ifnottex
(@pxref{Printing}) and @code{ps-print-buffer} (@pxref{PostScript}),
work in MS-DOS by sending the output to one of the printer ports.
@xref{MS-DOS Printing}.
@end ifnottex

  When you run a subprocess synchronously on MS-DOS, make sure the
program terminates and does not try to read keyboard input.  If the
program does not terminate on its own, you will be unable to terminate
it, because MS-DOS provides no general way to terminate a process.