comparison man/mule.texi @ 68549:9aa281f8a64b

Minor clarifications. Reduce the specific references to X Windows. Refer to "graphical" terminals, rather than window systems. (Text Coding): Renamed from Specify Coding. (Communication Coding, File Name Coding, Terminal Coding): New nodes split out from Text Coding.

68548:cd4235065942

  Emacs supports a wide variety of international character sets,
including European and Vietnamese variants of the Latin alphabet, as
well as Cyrillic, Devanagari (for Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopic, Greek,
Han (for Chinese and Japanese), Hangul (for Korean), Hebrew, IPA,
Kannada, Lao, Malayalam, Tamil, 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'')

  Emacs also supports various encodings of these characters used by
other internationalized software, such as word processors and mailers.

  Emacs allows editing text with international characters by supporting
all the related activities:

pass non-@acronym{ASCII} text between Emacs and programs it invokes (such as
compilers, spell-checkers, and mailers).  Setting your language
environment (@pxref{Language Environments}) takes care of setting up the
coding systems and other options for a specific language or culture.
Alternatively, you can specify how Emacs should encode or decode text
for each command; see @ref{Specify Coding}.

@item
You can display non-@acronym{ASCII} characters encoded by the various scripts.
This works by using appropriate fonts on X and similar graphics
displays (@pxref{Defining Fontsets}), and by sending special codes to
text-only displays (@pxref{Specify Coding}).  If some characters are
displayed incorrectly, refer to @ref{Undisplayable Characters}, which
describes possible problems and explains how to solve them.

@item
You can insert non-@acronym{ASCII} characters or search for them.  To do that,
you can specify an input method (@pxref{Select Input Method}) suitable
for your language, or use the default input method set up when you set
your language environment.  If
your keyboard can produce non-@acronym{ASCII} characters, you can select an
appropriate keyboard coding system (@pxref{Specify Coding}), and Emacs
will accept those characters.  Latin-1 characters can also be input by
using the @kbd{C-x 8} prefix, see @ref{Single-Byte Character Support,
C-x 8}.  On X Window systems, your locale should be set to an
appropriate value to make sure Emacs interprets keyboard input
correctly; see @ref{Language Environments, locales}.
@end itemize

  The rest of this chapter describes these issues in detail.

@menu

* Select Input Method::     Specifying your choice of input methods.
* Multibyte Conversion::    How single-byte characters convert to multibyte.
* Coding Systems::          Character set conversion when you read and
                              write files, and so on.
* 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

@end menu

@node International Chars
@section Introduction to International Character Sets

  The users of international character sets and scripts have established
many more-or-less standard coding systems for storing files.  Emacs
internally uses a single multibyte character encoding, so that it can
intermix characters from all these scripts in a single buffer or string.
This encoding represents each non-@acronym{ASCII} character as a sequence of bytes
in the range 0200 through 0377.  Emacs translates between the multibyte
character encoding and various other coding systems when reading and
writing files, when exchanging data with subprocesses, and (in some
cases) in the @kbd{C-q} command (@pxref{Multibyte Conversion}).

@kindex C-h h
@findex view-hello-file
@cindex undisplayable characters
@cindex @samp{?} in display

to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.

@node Enabling Multibyte
@section Enabling Multibyte Characters

@cindex turn multibyte support on or off
  You can enable or disable multibyte character support, either for
Emacs as a whole, or for a single buffer.  When multibyte characters are
disabled in a buffer, then each byte in that buffer represents a
character, even codes 0200 through 0377.  The old features for
supporting the European character sets, ISO Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2,
work as they did in Emacs 19 and also work for the other ISO 8859
character sets.

  However, there is no need to turn off multibyte character support to
use ISO Latin; the Emacs multibyte character set includes all the
characters in these character sets, and Emacs can translate
automatically to and from the ISO codes.

  By default, Emacs starts in multibyte mode, because that allows you to
use all the supported languages and scripts without limitations.

  To edit a particular file in unibyte representation, visit it using
@code{find-file-literally}.  @xref{Visiting}.  To convert a buffer in
multibyte representation into a single-byte representation of the same
characters, the easiest way is to save the contents in a file, kill the
buffer, and find the file again with @code{find-file-literally}.  You
can also use @kbd{C-x @key{RET} c}
(@code{universal-coding-system-argument}) and specify @samp{raw-text} as
the coding system with which to find or save a file.  @xref{Specify
Coding}.  Finding a file as @samp{raw-text} doesn't disable format
conversion, uncompression and auto mode selection as
@code{find-file-literally} does.

@vindex enable-multibyte-characters

@key{RET} c raw-text @key{RET}} immediately before loading it.

  The mode line indicates whether multibyte character support is enabled
in the current buffer.  If it is, there are two or more characters (most
often two dashes) before the colon near the beginning of the mode line.
When multibyte characters are not enabled, just one dash precedes the
colon.

@node Language Environments
@section Language Environments
@cindex language environments

@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}
@key{RET}} (@code{describe-language-environment}).  This tells you which
languages this language environment is useful for, and lists the
character sets, coding systems, and input methods that go with it.  It
also shows some sample text to illustrate scripts used in this language
environment.  By default, this command describes the chosen language
environment.

@vindex set-language-environment-hook
  You can customize any language environment with the normal hook
@code{set-language-environment-hook}.  The command
@code{set-language-environment} runs that hook after setting up the new

language environment that it is meant to be used with.  The variable
@code{current-input-method} records which input method is selected.

@findex toggle-input-method
@kindex C-\
  Input methods use various sequences of @acronym{ASCII} characters to stand for
non-@acronym{ASCII} characters.  Sometimes it is useful to turn off the input
method temporarily.  To do this, type @kbd{C-\}
(@code{toggle-input-method}).  To reenable the input method, type
@kbd{C-\} again.

  If you type @kbd{C-\} and you have not yet selected an input method,
it prompts for you to specify one.  This has the same effect as using

predictable.  For example, the coding system @code{iso-latin-1} has
variants @code{iso-latin-1-unix}, @code{iso-latin-1-dos} and
@code{iso-latin-1-mac}.

  The coding system @code{raw-text} is good for a file which is mainly
@acronym{ASCII} text, but may contain byte values above 127 which are not meant to
encode non-@acronym{ASCII} characters.  With @code{raw-text}, Emacs copies those
byte values unchanged, and sets @code{enable-multibyte-characters} to
@code{nil} in the current buffer so that they will be interpreted
properly.  @code{raw-text} handles end-of-line conversion in the usual
way, based on the data encountered, and has the usual three variants to
specify the kind of end-of-line conversion to use.

  In contrast, the coding system @code{no-conversion} specifies no
character code conversion at all---none for non-@acronym{ASCII} byte values and
none for end of line.  This is useful for reading or writing binary
files, tar files, and other files that must be examined verbatim.  It,

pattern, are decoded correctly.  One of the builtin
@code{auto-coding-functions} detects the encoding for XML files.

  If Emacs recognizes the encoding of a file incorrectly, you can
reread the file using the correct coding system by typing @kbd{C-x
@key{RET} r @var{coding-system}
@key{RET}}.  To see what coding system Emacs actually used to decode
the file, look at the coding system mnemonic letter near the left edge
of the mode line (@pxref{Mode Line}), or type @kbd{C-h C @key{RET}}.

@findex unify-8859-on-decoding-mode
  The command @code{unify-8859-on-decoding-mode} enables a mode that
``unifies'' the Latin alphabets when decoding text.  This works by
converting all non-@acronym{ASCII} Latin-@var{n} characters to either Latin-1 or
Unicode characters.  This way it is easier to use various
Latin-@var{n} alphabets together.  In a future Emacs version we hope
to move towards full Unicode support and complete unification of
character sets.

@vindex buffer-file-coding-system

coding system in @code{buffer-file-coding-system} and uses that coding
system, by default, for operations that write from this buffer into a
file.  This includes the commands @code{save-buffer} and
@code{write-region}.  If you want to write files from this buffer using
a different coding system, you can specify a different coding system for
the buffer using @code{set-buffer-file-coding-system} (@pxref{Specify
Coding}).

  You can insert any possible character into any Emacs buffer, but
most coding systems can only handle some of the possible characters.
This means that it is possible for you to insert characters that

system specified by the variable @code{rmail-file-coding-system}.  The
default value is @code{nil}, which means that Rmail files are not
translated (they are read and written in the Emacs internal character
code).

@node Specify Coding
@section Specifying a Coding System

  In cases where Emacs does not automatically choose the right coding
system, you can use these commands to specify one:

@table @kbd
@item C-x @key{RET} f @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for saving or revisiting the visited
file in the current buffer.

command.

@item C-x @key{RET} r @var{coding} @key{RET}
Revisit the current file using the coding system @var{coding}.

@item C-x @key{RET} k @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for keyboard input.

@item C-x @key{RET} t @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for terminal output.

@item C-x @key{RET} p @var{input-coding} @key{RET} @var{output-coding} @key{RET}
Use coding systems @var{input-coding} and @var{output-coding} for
subprocess input and output in the current buffer.

@item C-x @key{RET} x @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for transferring selections to and from
other programs through the window system.

@item C-x @key{RET} F @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for encoding and decoding file
@emph{names}.  This affects the use of non-ASCII characters in file
names.  It has no effect on reading and writing the @emph{contents} of
files.

@item C-x @key{RET} X @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for transferring @emph{one}
selection---the next one---to or from the window system.

@item M-x recode-region
Convert the region from a previous coding system to a new one.
@end table

@kindex C-x RET f
@findex set-buffer-file-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} f}

contains characters that the coding system cannot handle.

  Other file commands affected by a specified coding system include
@kbd{C-x C-i} and @kbd{C-x C-v}, as well as the other-window variants
of @kbd{C-x C-f}.  @kbd{C-x @key{RET} c} also affects commands that
start subprocesses, including @kbd{M-x shell} (@pxref{Shell}).

  If the immediately following command does not use the coding system,
then @kbd{C-x @key{RET} c} ultimately has no effect.

  An easy way to visit a file with no conversion is with the @kbd{M-x
find-file-literally} command.  @xref{Visiting}.

@vindex default-buffer-file-coding-system

@findex revert-buffer-with-coding-system
  If you visit a file with a wrong coding system, you can correct this
with @kbd{C-x @key{RET} r} (@code{revert-buffer-with-coding-system}).
This visits the current file again, using a coding system you specify.

@kindex C-x RET t
@findex set-terminal-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} t} (@code{set-terminal-coding-system})
specifies the coding system for terminal output.  If you specify a
character code for terminal output, all characters output to the
terminal are translated into that coding system.

  This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built to
support specific languages or character sets---for example, European
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
@vindex keyboard-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} k} (@code{set-keyboard-coding-system})
or the variable @code{keyboard-coding-system} specifies the coding
system for keyboard input.  Character-code translation of keyboard
input is useful for terminals with keys that send non-@acronym{ASCII}
graphic characters---for example, some terminals designed for ISO
Latin-1 or subsets of it.

  By default, keyboard input is translated based on your system locale
setting.  If your terminal does not really support the encoding
implied by your locale (for example, if you find it inserts a
non-@acronym{ASCII} character if you type @kbd{M-i}), you will need to set
@code{keyboard-coding-system} to @code{nil} to turn off encoding.
You can do this by putting

@lisp
(set-keyboard-coding-system nil)
@end lisp

@noindent
in your @file{~/.emacs} file.

  There is a similarity between using a coding system translation for
keyboard input, and using an input method: both define sequences of
keyboard input that translate into single characters.  However, input
methods are designed to be convenient for interactive use by humans, and
the sequences that are translated are typically sequences of @acronym{ASCII}
printing characters.  Coding systems typically translate sequences of
non-graphic characters.

@kindex C-x RET x
@kindex C-x RET X
@findex set-selection-coding-system
@findex set-next-selection-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} x} (@code{set-selection-coding-system})
specifies the coding system for sending selected text to the window
system, and for receiving the text of selections made in other
applications.  This command applies to all subsequent selections, until
you override it by using the command again.  The command @kbd{C-x
@key{RET} X} (@code{set-next-selection-coding-system}) specifies the
coding system for the next selection made in Emacs or read by Emacs.

command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess has its
own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify translation to
and from a particular subprocess by giving the command in the
corresponding buffer.

  The default for translation of process input and output depends on the
current language environment.

@findex recode-region
  If a piece of text has already been inserted into a buffer using the
wrong coding system, you can decode it again using @kbd{M-x
recode-region}.  This prompts you for the old coding system and the
desired coding system, and acts on the text in the region.

@vindex file-name-coding-system
@cindex file names with non-@acronym{ASCII} characters
@findex set-file-name-coding-system
@kindex C-x @key{RET} F
  The variable @code{file-name-coding-system} specifies a coding
system to use for encoding file names.  If you set the variable to a
coding system name (as a Lisp symbol or a string), Emacs encodes file
names using that coding system for all file operations.  This makes it
possible to use non-@acronym{ASCII} characters in file names---or, at
least, those non-@acronym{ASCII} characters which the specified coding
system can encode.  Use @kbd{C-x @key{RET} F}
(@code{set-file-name-coding-system}) to specify this interactively.

  If @code{file-name-coding-system} is @code{nil}, Emacs uses a default
coding system determined by the selected language environment.  In the
default language environment, any non-@acronym{ASCII} characters in file names are
not encoded specially; they appear in the file system using the internal
Emacs representation.

  @strong{Warning:} if you change @code{file-name-coding-system} (or the
language environment) in the middle of an Emacs session, problems can
result if you have already visited files whose names were encoded using
the earlier coding system and cannot be encoded (or are encoded
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.

@findex recode-file-name
  If a mistake occurs when encoding a file name, use the command
@kbd{M-x recode-file-name} to change the file name's coding
system.  This prompts for an existing file name, its old coding
system, and the coding system to which you wish to convert.

@vindex locale-coding-system
@cindex decoding non-@acronym{ASCII} keyboard input on X
  The variable @code{locale-coding-system} specifies a coding system
to use when encoding and decoding system strings such as system error

specified by one of the environment variables @env{LC_ALL},
@env{LC_CTYPE}, and @env{LANG}.  (The first one, in the order
specified above, whose value is nonempty is the one that determines
the text representation.)

@node Fontsets
@section Fontsets
@cindex fontsets

  A font for X typically defines shapes for a single alphabet or script.
Therefore, displaying the entire range of scripts that Emacs supports
requires a collection of many fonts.  In Emacs, such a collection is
called a @dfn{fontset}.  A fontset is defined by a list of fonts, each
assigned to handle a range of character codes.

  Each fontset has a name, like a font.  The available X fonts are
defined by the X server; fontsets, however, are defined within Emacs
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

characters.@footnote{The Emacs 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-@acronym{ASCII} characters; however, this is
not the default for Emacs to use.  (By default, Emacs tries to find a
font that has bold and italic variants.)  You can specify use of the
standard fontset with the @samp{-fn} option, or with the @samp{Font} X
resource (@pxref{Font X}).  For example,

@example
emacs -fn fontset-standard
@end example

@node Undisplayable Characters
@section Undisplayable Characters

  There may be a some non-@acronym{ASCII} characters that your terminal cannot
display.  Most non-windowing terminals support just a single character
set (use the variable @code{default-terminal-coding-system}
(@pxref{Specify Coding}) to tell Emacs which one); characters which
can't be encoded in that coding system are displayed as @samp{?} by
default.

  Windowing terminals can display a broader range of characters, but
you may not have fonts installed for all of them; characters that have
no font appear as a hollow box.

  If you use Latin-1 characters but your terminal can't display
Latin-1, you can arrange to display mnemonic @acronym{ASCII} sequences

set-language-environment} and specify a suitable language environment
such as @samp{Latin-@var{n}}.

  For more information about unibyte operation, see @ref{Enabling
Multibyte}.  Note particularly that you probably want to ensure that
your initialization files are read as unibyte if they contain non-@acronym{ASCII}
characters.

@vindex unibyte-display-via-language-environment
  Emacs can also display those characters, provided the terminal or font
in use supports them.  This works automatically.  Alternatively, if you
are using a window system, Emacs can also display single-byte characters

@item
If your keyboard can generate character codes 128 (decimal) and up,
representing non-@acronym{ASCII} characters, you can type those character codes
directly.

On a window system, you should not need to do anything special to use
these keys; they should simply work.  On a text-only terminal, you
should use the command @code{M-x set-keyboard-coding-system} or the
variable @code{keyboard-coding-system} to specify which coding system
your keyboard uses (@pxref{Specify Coding}).  Enabling this feature
will probably require you to use @kbd{ESC} to type Meta characters;
however, on a console terminal or in @code{xterm}, you can arrange for
Meta to be converted to @kbd{ESC} and still be able type 8-bit
characters present directly on the keyboard or using @kbd{Compose} or
@kbd{AltGr} keys.  @xref{User Input}.

@cindex charsets

  Emacs groups all supported characters into disjoint @dfn{charsets}.
Each character code belongs to one and only one charset.  For
historical reasons, Emacs typically divides an 8-bit character code
for an extended version of @acronym{ASCII} into two charsets: @acronym{ASCII}, which
covers the codes 0 through 127, plus another charset which covers the
``right-hand part'' (the codes 128 and up).  For instance, the
characters of Latin-1 include the Emacs charset @code{ascii} plus the
Emacs charset @code{latin-iso8859-1}.

  Emacs characters belonging to different charsets may look the same,
but they are still different characters.  For example, the letter
@samp{o} with acute accent in charset @code{latin-iso8859-1}, used for
Latin-1, is different from the letter @samp{o} with acute accent in

68549:9aa281f8a64b

  Emacs supports a wide variety of international character sets,
including European and Vietnamese variants of the Latin alphabet, as
well as Cyrillic, Devanagari (for Hindi and Marathi), Ethiopic, Greek,
Han (for Chinese and Japanese), Hangul (for Korean), Hebrew, IPA,
Kannada, Lao, Malayalam, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan, and Vietnamese scripts.
Emacs also supports various encodings of these characters used by
other internationalized software, such as word processors and mailers.

  Emacs allows editing text with international characters by supporting
all the related activities:

pass non-@acronym{ASCII} text between Emacs and programs it invokes (such as
compilers, spell-checkers, and mailers).  Setting your language
environment (@pxref{Language Environments}) takes care of setting up the
coding systems and other options for a specific language or culture.
Alternatively, you can specify how Emacs should encode or decode text
for each command; see @ref{Text Coding}.

@item
You can display non-@acronym{ASCII} characters encoded by the various
scripts.  This works by using appropriate fonts on graphics displays
(@pxref{Defining Fontsets}), and by sending special codes to text-only
displays (@pxref{Terminal Coding}).  If some characters are displayed
incorrectly, refer to @ref{Undisplayable Characters}, which describes
possible problems and explains how to solve them.

@item
You can insert non-@acronym{ASCII} characters or search for them.  To do that,
you can specify an input method (@pxref{Select Input Method}) suitable
for your language, or use the default input method set up when you set
your language environment.  If
your keyboard can produce non-@acronym{ASCII} characters, you can select an
appropriate keyboard coding system (@pxref{Terminal Coding}), and Emacs
will accept those characters.  Latin-1 characters can also be input by
using the @kbd{C-x 8} prefix, see @ref{Single-Byte Character Support,
C-x 8}.

On X Window systems, your locale should be set to an appropriate value
to make sure Emacs interprets keyboard input correctly; see
@ref{Language Environments, locales}.
@end itemize

  The rest of this chapter describes these issues in detail.

@menu

* Select Input Method::     Specifying your choice of input methods.
* Multibyte Conversion::    How single-byte characters convert to multibyte.
* Coding Systems::          Character set conversion when you read and
                              write files, and so on.
* Recognize Coding::        How Emacs figures out which conversion to use.
* Text Coding::             Choosing conversion to use for file text.
* Communications Coding::   Coding systems for interprocess communication.
* File Name Coding::        Coding systems for file @emph{names}.
* Terminal Coding::         Specifying coding systems for converting
                              terminal input and output.
* 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

@end menu

@node International Chars
@section Introduction to International Character Sets

  The users of international character sets and scripts have
established many more-or-less standard coding systems for storing
files.  Emacs internally uses a single multibyte character encoding,
so that it can intermix characters from all these scripts in a single
buffer or string.  This encoding represents each non-@acronym{ASCII}
character as a sequence of bytes in the range 0200 through 0377.
Emacs translates between the multibyte character encoding and various
other coding systems when reading and writing files, when exchanging
data with subprocesses, and (in some cases) in the @kbd{C-q} command
(@pxref{Multibyte Conversion}).

@kindex C-h h
@findex view-hello-file
@cindex undisplayable characters
@cindex @samp{?} in display

to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods.

@node Enabling Multibyte
@section Enabling Multibyte Characters

  By default, Emacs starts in multibyte mode, because that allows you to
use all the supported languages and scripts without limitations.

@cindex turn multibyte support on or off
  You can enable or disable multibyte character support, either for
Emacs as a whole, or for a single buffer.  When multibyte characters
are disabled in a buffer, we call that @dfn{unibyte mode}.  Then each
byte in that buffer represents a character, even codes 0200 through
0377.

  The old features for supporting the European character sets, ISO
Latin-1 and ISO Latin-2, work in unibyte mode as they did in Emacs 19
and also work for the other ISO 8859 character sets.  However, there
is no need to turn off multibyte character support to use ISO Latin;
the Emacs multibyte character set includes all the characters in these
character sets, and Emacs can translate automatically to and from the
ISO codes.

  To edit a particular file in unibyte representation, visit it using
@code{find-file-literally}.  @xref{Visiting}.  To convert a buffer in
multibyte representation into a single-byte representation of the same
characters, the easiest way is to save the contents in a file, kill the
buffer, and find the file again with @code{find-file-literally}.  You
can also use @kbd{C-x @key{RET} c}
(@code{universal-coding-system-argument}) and specify @samp{raw-text} as
the coding system with which to find or save a file.  @xref{Text
Coding}.  Finding a file as @samp{raw-text} doesn't disable format
conversion, uncompression and auto mode selection as
@code{find-file-literally} does.

@vindex enable-multibyte-characters

@key{RET} c raw-text @key{RET}} immediately before loading it.

  The mode line indicates whether multibyte character support is enabled
in the current buffer.  If it is, there are two or more characters (most
often two dashes) before the colon near the beginning of the mode line.
When multibyte characters are not enabled, nothing precedes the colon
except a single dash.

@node Language Environments
@section Language Environments
@cindex language environments

@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}
@key{RET}} (@code{describe-language-environment}).  This tells you
which languages this language environment is useful for, and lists the
character sets, coding systems, and input methods that go with it.  It
also shows some sample text to illustrate scripts used in this
language environment.  If you give an empty input for @var{lang-env},
this command describes the chosen language environment.

@vindex set-language-environment-hook
  You can customize any language environment with the normal hook
@code{set-language-environment-hook}.  The command
@code{set-language-environment} runs that hook after setting up the new

language environment that it is meant to be used with.  The variable
@code{current-input-method} records which input method is selected.

@findex toggle-input-method
@kindex C-\
  Input methods use various sequences of @acronym{ASCII} characters to
stand for non-@acronym{ASCII} characters.  Sometimes it is useful to
turn off the input method temporarily.  To do this, type @kbd{C-\}
(@code{toggle-input-method}).  To reenable the input method, type
@kbd{C-\} again.

  If you type @kbd{C-\} and you have not yet selected an input method,
it prompts for you to specify one.  This has the same effect as using

predictable.  For example, the coding system @code{iso-latin-1} has
variants @code{iso-latin-1-unix}, @code{iso-latin-1-dos} and
@code{iso-latin-1-mac}.

  The coding system @code{raw-text} is good for a file which is mainly
@acronym{ASCII} text, but may contain byte values above 127 which are
not meant to encode non-@acronym{ASCII} characters.  With
@code{raw-text}, Emacs copies those byte values unchanged, and sets
@code{enable-multibyte-characters} to @code{nil} in the current buffer
so that they will be interpreted properly.  @code{raw-text} handles
end-of-line conversion in the usual way, based on the data
encountered, and has the usual three variants to specify the kind of
end-of-line conversion to use.

  In contrast, the coding system @code{no-conversion} specifies no
character code conversion at all---none for non-@acronym{ASCII} byte values and
none for end of line.  This is useful for reading or writing binary
files, tar files, and other files that must be examined verbatim.  It,

pattern, are decoded correctly.  One of the builtin
@code{auto-coding-functions} detects the encoding for XML files.

  If Emacs recognizes the encoding of a file incorrectly, you can
reread the file using the correct coding system by typing @kbd{C-x
@key{RET} r @var{coding-system} @key{RET}}.  To see what coding system
Emacs actually used to decode the file, look at the coding system
mnemonic letter near the left edge of the mode line (@pxref{Mode
Line}), or type @kbd{C-h C @key{RET}}.

@findex unify-8859-on-decoding-mode
  The command @code{unify-8859-on-decoding-mode} enables a mode that
``unifies'' the Latin alphabets when decoding text.  This works by
converting all non-@acronym{ASCII} Latin-@var{n} characters to either
Latin-1 or Unicode characters.  This way it is easier to use various
Latin-@var{n} alphabets together.  In a future Emacs version we hope
to move towards full Unicode support and complete unification of
character sets.

@vindex buffer-file-coding-system

coding system in @code{buffer-file-coding-system} and uses that coding
system, by default, for operations that write from this buffer into a
file.  This includes the commands @code{save-buffer} and
@code{write-region}.  If you want to write files from this buffer using
a different coding system, you can specify a different coding system for
the buffer using @code{set-buffer-file-coding-system} (@pxref{Text
Coding}).

  You can insert any possible character into any Emacs buffer, but
most coding systems can only handle some of the possible characters.
This means that it is possible for you to insert characters that

system specified by the variable @code{rmail-file-coding-system}.  The
default value is @code{nil}, which means that Rmail files are not
translated (they are read and written in the Emacs internal character
code).

@node Text Coding
@section Specifying a Coding System for File Text

  In cases where Emacs does not automatically choose the right coding
system for a file's contents, you can use these commands to specify
one:

@table @kbd
@item C-x @key{RET} f @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for saving or revisiting the visited
file in the current buffer.

command.

@item C-x @key{RET} r @var{coding} @key{RET}
Revisit the current file using the coding system @var{coding}.

@item M-x recode-region @key{RET} @var{right} @key{RET} @var{wrong} @key{RET}
Convert a region that was decoded using coding system @var{wrong},
decoding it using coding system @var{right} instead.
@end table

@kindex C-x RET f
@findex set-buffer-file-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} f}

contains characters that the coding system cannot handle.

  Other file commands affected by a specified coding system include
@kbd{C-x C-i} and @kbd{C-x C-v}, as well as the other-window variants
of @kbd{C-x C-f}.  @kbd{C-x @key{RET} c} also affects commands that
start subprocesses, including @kbd{M-x shell} (@pxref{Shell}).  If the
immediately following command does not use the coding system, then
@kbd{C-x @key{RET} c} ultimately has no effect.

  An easy way to visit a file with no conversion is with the @kbd{M-x
find-file-literally} command.  @xref{Visiting}.

@vindex default-buffer-file-coding-system

@findex revert-buffer-with-coding-system
  If you visit a file with a wrong coding system, you can correct this
with @kbd{C-x @key{RET} r} (@code{revert-buffer-with-coding-system}).
This visits the current file again, using a coding system you specify.

@findex recode-region
  If a piece of text has already been inserted into a buffer using the
wrong coding system, you can redo the decoding of it using @kbd{M-x
recode-region}.  This prompts you for the proper coding system, then
for the wrong coding system that was actually used, and does the
conversion.  It first encodes the region using the wrong coding system,
then decodes it again using the proper coding system.

@node Communication Coding
@section Coding Systems for Interprocess Communication

  This section explains how to specify coding systems for use
in communication with other processes.

@table @kbd
@item C-x @key{RET} x @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for transferring selections to and from
other programs through the window system.

@item C-x @key{RET} X @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for transferring @emph{one}
selection---the next one---to or from the window system.

@item C-x @key{RET} p @var{input-coding} @key{RET} @var{output-coding} @key{RET}
Use coding systems @var{input-coding} and @var{output-coding} for
subprocess input and output in the current buffer.

@item C-x @key{RET} c @var{coding} @key{RET}
Specify coding system @var{coding} for the immediately following
command.
@end table

@kindex C-x RET x
@kindex C-x RET X
@findex set-selection-coding-system
@findex set-next-selection-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} x} (@code{set-selection-coding-system})
specifies the coding system for sending selected text to other windowing
applications, and for receiving the text of selections made in other
applications.  This command applies to all subsequent selections, until
you override it by using the command again.  The command @kbd{C-x
@key{RET} X} (@code{set-next-selection-coding-system}) specifies the
coding system for the next selection made in Emacs or read by Emacs.

command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess has its
own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify translation to
and from a particular subprocess by giving the command in the
corresponding buffer.

  You can also use @kbd{C-x @key{RET} c} just before the command that
runs or starts a subprocess, to specify the coding system to use for
communication with that subprocess.

  The default for translation of process input and output depends on the
current language environment.

@vindex locale-coding-system
@cindex decoding non-@acronym{ASCII} keyboard input on X
  The variable @code{locale-coding-system} specifies a coding system
to use when encoding and decoding system strings such as system error

specified by one of the environment variables @env{LC_ALL},
@env{LC_CTYPE}, and @env{LANG}.  (The first one, in the order
specified above, whose value is nonempty is the one that determines
the text representation.)

@node File Name Coding
@section Coding Systems for File Names

@table @kbd
@item C-x @key{RET} F @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for encoding and decoding file
@emph{names}.
@end table

@vindex file-name-coding-system
@cindex file names with non-@acronym{ASCII} characters
  The variable @code{file-name-coding-system} specifies a coding
system to use for encoding file names.  It has no effect on reading
and writing the @emph{contents} of files.

@findex set-file-name-coding-system
@kindex C-x @key{RET} F
  If you set the variable to a coding system name (as a Lisp symbol or
a string), Emacs encodes file names using that coding system for all
file operations.  This makes it possible to use non-@acronym{ASCII}
characters in file names---or, at least, those non-@acronym{ASCII}
characters which the specified coding system can encode.  Use @kbd{C-x
@key{RET} F} (@code{set-file-name-coding-system}) to specify this
interactively.

  If @code{file-name-coding-system} is @code{nil}, Emacs uses a
default coding system determined by the selected language environment.
In the default language environment, any non-@acronym{ASCII}
characters in file names are not encoded specially; they appear in the
file system using the internal Emacs representation.

  @strong{Warning:} if you change @code{file-name-coding-system} (or the
language environment) in the middle of an Emacs session, problems can
result if you have already visited files whose names were encoded using
the earlier coding system and cannot be encoded (or are encoded
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.

@findex recode-file-name
  If a mistake occurs when encoding a file name, use the command
@kbd{M-x recode-file-name} to change the file name's coding
system.  This prompts for an existing file name, its old coding
system, and the coding system to which you wish to convert.

@node Terminal Coding
@section Coding Systems for Terminal I/O

@table @kbd
@item C-x @key{RET} k @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for keyboard input.

@item C-x @key{RET} t @var{coding} @key{RET}
Use coding system @var{coding} for terminal output.
@end table

@kindex C-x RET t
@findex set-terminal-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} t} (@code{set-terminal-coding-system})
specifies the coding system for terminal output.  If you specify a
character code for terminal output, all characters output to the
terminal are translated into that coding system.

  This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built to
support specific languages or character sets---for example, European
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
@vindex keyboard-coding-system
  The command @kbd{C-x @key{RET} k} (@code{set-keyboard-coding-system})
or the variable @code{keyboard-coding-system} specifies the coding
system for keyboard input.  Character-code translation of keyboard
input is useful for terminals with keys that send non-@acronym{ASCII}
graphic characters---for example, some terminals designed for ISO
Latin-1 or subsets of it.

  By default, keyboard input is translated based on your system locale
setting.  If your terminal does not really support the encoding
implied by your locale (for example, if you find it inserts a
non-@acronym{ASCII} character if you type @kbd{M-i}), you will need to set
@code{keyboard-coding-system} to @code{nil} to turn off encoding.
You can do this by putting

@lisp
(set-keyboard-coding-system nil)
@end lisp

@noindent
in your @file{~/.emacs} file.

  There is a similarity between using a coding system translation for
keyboard input, and using an input method: both define sequences of
keyboard input that translate into single characters.  However, input
methods are designed to be convenient for interactive use by humans, and
the sequences that are translated are typically sequences of @acronym{ASCII}
printing characters.  Coding systems typically translate sequences of
non-graphic characters.

@node Fontsets
@section Fontsets
@cindex fontsets

  A font for X Windows typically defines shapes for a single alphabet
or script.  Therefore, displaying the entire range of scripts that
Emacs supports requires a collection of many fonts.  In Emacs, such a
collection is called a @dfn{fontset}.  A fontset is defined by a list
of fonts, each assigned to handle a range of character codes.

  Each fontset has a name, like a font.  The available X fonts are
defined by the X server; fontsets, however, are defined within Emacs
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

characters.@footnote{The Emacs 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-@acronym{ASCII} characters;
however, this is not the default for Emacs to use.  (By default, Emacs
tries to find a font that has bold and italic variants.)  You can
specify use of the standard fontset with the @samp{-fn} option, or
with the @samp{Font} X resource (@pxref{Font X}).  For example,

@example
emacs -fn fontset-standard
@end example

@node Undisplayable Characters
@section Undisplayable Characters

  There may be a some non-@acronym{ASCII} characters that your terminal cannot
display.  Most text-only terminals support just a single character
set (use the variable @code{default-terminal-coding-system}
(@pxref{Terminal Coding}) to tell Emacs which one); characters which
can't be encoded in that coding system are displayed as @samp{?} by
default.

  Graphical displays can display a broader range of characters, but
you may not have fonts installed for all of them; characters that have
no font appear as a hollow box.

  If you use Latin-1 characters but your terminal can't display
Latin-1, you can arrange to display mnemonic @acronym{ASCII} sequences

set-language-environment} and specify a suitable language environment
such as @samp{Latin-@var{n}}.

  For more information about unibyte operation, see @ref{Enabling
Multibyte}.  Note particularly that you probably want to ensure that
your initialization files are read as unibyte if they contain
non-@acronym{ASCII} characters.

@vindex unibyte-display-via-language-environment
  Emacs can also display those characters, provided the terminal or font
in use supports them.  This works automatically.  Alternatively, if you
are using a window system, Emacs can also display single-byte characters

@item
If your keyboard can generate character codes 128 (decimal) and up,
representing non-@acronym{ASCII} characters, you can type those character codes
directly.

On a graphical display, you should not need to do anything special to use
these keys; they should simply work.  On a text-only terminal, you
should use the command @code{M-x set-keyboard-coding-system} or the
variable @code{keyboard-coding-system} to specify which coding system
your keyboard uses (@pxref{Terminal Coding}).  Enabling this feature
will probably require you to use @kbd{ESC} to type Meta characters;
however, on a console terminal or in @code{xterm}, you can arrange for
Meta to be converted to @kbd{ESC} and still be able type 8-bit
characters present directly on the keyboard or using @kbd{Compose} or
@kbd{AltGr} keys.  @xref{User Input}.

@cindex charsets

  Emacs groups all supported characters into disjoint @dfn{charsets}.
Each character code belongs to one and only one charset.  For
historical reasons, Emacs typically divides an 8-bit character code
for an extended version of @acronym{ASCII} into two charsets:
@acronym{ASCII}, which covers the codes 0 through 127, plus another
charset which covers the ``right-hand part'' (the codes 128 and up).
For instance, the characters of Latin-1 include the Emacs charset
@code{ascii} plus the Emacs charset @code{latin-iso8859-1}.

  Emacs characters belonging to different charsets may look the same,
but they are still different characters.  For example, the letter
@samp{o} with acute accent in charset @code{latin-iso8859-1}, used for
Latin-1, is different from the letter @samp{o} with acute accent in