comparison man/mule.texi @ 33745:78ec4a7ba765

(Undisplayable Characters): New node. Tweaks elsewhere.

33744:67204e92850a

* Recognize Coding::        How Emacs figures out which conversion to use.
* Specify Coding::          Various ways to choose which conversion to use.
* Fontsets::                Fontsets are collections of fonts
                              that cover the whole spectrum of characters.
* Defining Fontsets::       Defining a new fontset.
* Single-Byte Character Support::
                            You can pick one European character set
                            to use without multibyte characters.
@end menu

@findex view-hello-file
  The command @kbd{C-h h} (@code{view-hello-file}) displays the file
@file{etc/HELLO}, which shows how to say ``hello'' in many languages.
This illustrates various scripts.  If the font you're using doesn't have
characters for all those different languages, you will see some hollow
boxes instead of characters; see @ref{Fontsets}.

@findex list-charset-chars
@cindex characters in a certain charset
  The command @kbd{M-x list-charset-chars} prompts for a name of a
character set, and displays all the characters in that character set.

@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:

@cindex euro sign
@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 (Celtic), Latin-9 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro

fonts.

@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

  When multibyte characters are enabled, character codes 0240 (octal)
through 0377 (octal) are not really legitimate in the buffer.  The valid
non-ASCII printing characters have codes that start from 0400.

  If you type a self-inserting character in the invalid range 0240
through 0377, Emacs assumes you intended to use one of the ISO
Latin-@var{n} character sets, and converts it to the Emacs code
representing that Latin-@var{n} character.  You select @emph{which} ISO
Latin character set to use through your choice of language environment
@iftex

(@pxref{Language Environments}).
@end ifinfo
If you do not specify a choice, the default is Latin-1.

  The same thing happens when you use @kbd{C-q} to enter an octal code
in this range.

@node Coding Systems
@section Coding Systems
@cindex coding systems

terminals that support one of the ISO Latin character sets.  You need to
specify the terminal coding system when using multibyte text, so that
Emacs knows which characters the terminal can actually handle.

  By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all, unless
Emacs can deduce the proper coding system from your terminal type.

@kindex C-x RET k
@findex set-keyboard-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} k} (@code{set-keyboard-coding-system})
specifies the coding system for keyboard input.  Character-code

itself.  Once you have defined a fontset, you can use it within Emacs by
specifying its name, anywhere that you could use a single font.  Of
course, Emacs fontsets can use only the fonts that the X server
supports; if certain characters appear on the screen as hollow boxes,
this means that the fontset in use for them has no font for those
characters.

  Emacs creates two fontsets automatically: the @dfn{standard fontset}
and the @dfn{startup fontset}.  The standard fontset is most likely to
have fonts for a wide variety of non-ASCII characters; however, this is
not the default for Emacs to use.  (By default, Emacs tries to find a

  The function that processes the fontset resource value to create the
fontset is called @code{create-fontset-from-fontset-spec}.  You can also
call this function explicitly to create a fontset.

  @xref{Font X}, for more information about font naming in X.

@node Single-Byte Character Support
@section Single-byte Character Set Support

@cindex European character sets

33745:78ec4a7ba765

* Recognize Coding::        How Emacs figures out which conversion to use.
* Specify Coding::          Various ways to choose which conversion to use.
* Fontsets::                Fontsets are collections of fonts
                              that cover the whole spectrum of characters.
* Defining Fontsets::       Defining a new fontset.
* Undisplayable Characters:: When characters don't display.
* Single-Byte Character Support::
                            You can pick one European character set
                            to use without multibyte characters.
@end menu

@findex view-hello-file
  The command @kbd{C-h h} (@code{view-hello-file}) displays the file
@file{etc/HELLO}, which shows how to say ``hello'' in many languages.
This illustrates various scripts.  If the font you're using doesn't have
characters for all those different languages, you will see some hollow
boxes instead of characters; see @ref{Fontsets}.  On non-windowing
displays, @samp{?} is displayed in place of the hollow box.

@findex list-charset-chars
@cindex characters in a certain charset
  The command @kbd{M-x list-charset-chars} prompts for a name of a
character set, and displays all the characters in that character set.

@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:

@cindex Euro sign
@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 (Celtic), Latin-9 (updated Latin-1, with the Euro

fonts.

@findex set-locale-environment
@vindex locale-language-names
@vindex locale-charset-language-names
@cindex locales
  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

  When multibyte characters are enabled, character codes 0240 (octal)
through 0377 (octal) are not really legitimate in the buffer.  The valid
non-ASCII printing characters have codes that start from 0400.

  If you type a self-inserting character in the range 0240
through 0377, Emacs assumes you intended to use one of the ISO
Latin-@var{n} character sets, and converts it to the Emacs code
representing that Latin-@var{n} character.  You select @emph{which} ISO
Latin character set to use through your choice of language environment
@iftex

(@pxref{Language Environments}).
@end ifinfo
If you do not specify a choice, the default is Latin-1.

  The same thing happens when you use @kbd{C-q} to enter an octal code
in this range.  If you enter a code in the range 0200 through 0237,
which forms the @code{eight-bit-control} character set, it is inserted
literally.  You should normally avoid doing this since buffers
containing such characters have to be written out in either the
@code{emacs-mule} or @code{raw-text} coding system, which is usually not
what you want.

@node Coding Systems
@section Coding Systems
@cindex coding systems

terminals that support one of the ISO Latin character sets.  You need to
specify the terminal coding system when using multibyte text, so that
Emacs knows which characters the terminal can actually handle.

  By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all, unless
Emacs can deduce the proper coding system from your terminal type or
your locale specification (@pxref{Language Environments}).

@kindex C-x RET k
@findex set-keyboard-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} k} (@code{set-keyboard-coding-system})
specifies the coding system for keyboard input.  Character-code

itself.  Once you have defined a fontset, you can use it within Emacs by
specifying its name, anywhere that you could use a single font.  Of
course, Emacs fontsets can use only the fonts that the X server
supports; if certain characters appear on the screen as hollow boxes,
this means that the fontset in use for them has no font for those
characters.@footnote{The installation instructions have information on
additional font support.}

  Emacs creates two fontsets automatically: the @dfn{standard fontset}
and the @dfn{startup fontset}.  The standard fontset is most likely to
have fonts for a wide variety of non-ASCII characters; however, this is
not the default for Emacs to use.  (By default, Emacs tries to find a

  The function that processes the fontset resource value to create the
fontset is called @code{create-fontset-from-fontset-spec}.  You can also
call this function explicitly to create a fontset.

  @xref{Font X}, for more information about font naming in X.

@node Undisplayable Characters
@section Undisplayable Characters

Your terminal may not be able to display some non-@sc{ascii} characters.
Most non-windowing terminals can only use a single character set,
specified by the variable @code{default-terminal-coding-system}
(@pxref{Specify Coding}) and characters which can't be encoded in it are
displayed as @samp{?} by default.  Windowing terminals may not have the
necessary font available to display a given character and display a
hollow box instead.  You can change the default behavior.

If you use Latin-1 characters but your terminal can't display Latin-1,
you can arrange to display mnemonic @sc{ascii} sequences instead, e.g.@:
@samp{"o} for o-umlaut.  Load the library @file{iso-ascii} to do this.

If your terminal can display Latin-1, you can display characters from
other European character sets using a mixture of equivalent Latin-1
characters and @sc{ascii} mnemonics.  Use the Custom option
@code{latin1-display} to enable this.  The mnemonic @sc{ascii} sequences
mostly correspond to those of the prefix input methods.

@node Single-Byte Character Support
@section Single-byte Character Set Support

@cindex European character sets