Table of Contents

The first part of this appendix is an overview of SCO Merge National Language Support (NLS). The second part has information for configuring the NLS features of SCO Merge.

When SCO Merge is installed, it attempts to configure itself for the same language (or locale) and keyboard as your UNIX system. If this automatic configuration is not correct, refer to ``Setting up the SCO Merge NLS environment''.

SCO Merge national language support

• Support of multiple DOS code pages. You can select the DOS code page best suited to the language you use.

• Automatic translation of keyboard input and displayed output. For example, you can view a DOS text file that contains non-ASCII characters even if you use an ASCII terminal.

• The text conversion programs dos2unix, unix2dos, and charconv. You can use these programs to convert text from one code page or code set to another and convert from DOS to UNIX format or vice versa.

This appendix assumes you have some familiarity with DOS code pages. Refer to DOS documentation for more complete information on NLS-related DOS commands such as CHCP, COUNTRY, KEYB, MODE, and NLSFUNC.

DOS uses several different code pages to fill the needs of most European languages.

The UNIX operating system, on the other hand, uses only one code set, ISO 8859-1, to handle most European languages. SCO Merge supports that code set.

If you use only DOS or only the UNIX system, you do not need to be aware of any differences between DOS code pages and UNIX code sets. When you use SCO Merge to combine DOS and the UNIX system, however, you may notice some differences between the DOS and UNIX environments. Some characters in data and file names created with one operating system may be displayed as different characters when you view them with the other operating system. For example, suppose you have a DOS file called memo containing the following text:

   This memo describes the features of our æNET product.

   This memo describes the features of our *NET product.

This appendix explains how to set up your DOS and UNIX environments so you get the most consistent behavior when you combine the DOS and UNIX operating systems. ``Converting text files'' also describes the SCO Merge dos2unix, unix2dos, and charconv programs, which you can use to convert text files in a variety of different ways.

How DOS handles NLS

In the U.S., hardware devices commonly use code page 437 by default. Hardware devices designed for use in other countries use other code pages by default.

Not all devices can recognize all software code pages. Some printers, for instance, can print only the symbols contained in their hardware code pages. Thus, a particular character may be stored in the computer's memory as part of a software code page, but the attached printer may be unable to print that symbol correctly when it is sent. Some DOS monitors are limited in the characters they can display for the same reason. See ``Display considerations'' for further details.

Not all code pages and code sets are supported for every operation. A particular character set may be viewable on the console, for instance, but not viewable at an attached terminal or printable by the printers attached.

Code page switching

COUNTRY

Use COUNTRY to specify the country. Place this command in the config.sys file. The command sets country-specific variables, such as the formats used for dates, times, and currencies. It also establishes the character collation sequence.

KEYB

Use the KEYB command to map the keyboard.

DEVICE

Use DEVICE= statements in the config.sys file to configure system devices. These statements tell DOS the hardware and software code pages to associate with each device.

NLSFUNC

Place the NLSFUNC command in the autoexec.bat file to load memory-resident NLS code. You must do this before you try to specify code pages or keyboard codes.

CODEPAGE PREPARE

Place the command:

    MODE device CODEPAGE PREPARE

in the autoexec.bat file. This prepares code pages for those devices that support code-page switching.

CHCP

Use the CHCP command to switch between code pages.

The UNIX locale command prints out the current NLS setup. SCO Merge uses the LANG setting to determine the language and character set. LANG is of the form:

LANG=language_territory.codeset

For instance, LANG=fr_FR.8859-1 sets the language to French as spoken in France, and uses ISO Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1) as the character set. All dates, times, and currencies are expressed as is customary in that region.

NLS features of SCO Merge

The complete set of SCO Merge NLS features is available when you run DOS on an ISO terminal, on a VGA console, or in a VGA DOS environment from the Desktop.

Throughout this appendix, VGA display refers to a VGA console or to a VGA DOS environment on the Desktop. VGA session refers to a DOS session run on any of these displays.

Only a subset of SCO Merge NLS features is available when you use any of the following displays:

• MDA, CGA, or Hercules consoles

• Standard ASCII terminals

• PC scancode terminals

The same restrictions apply to standard ASCII terminals and PC scancode terminals. In addition, there are some DOS characters that cannot be displayed on ASCII terminals. When you use DOS to display text containing these characters, SCO Merge replaces them with asterisks.

Setting up the SCO Merge NLS environment

You can view or modify the current setting using the Locale Settings window of Merge Setup. You must be logged in as root to change NLS settings; otherwise, you can only view the current settings.

Follow these steps to access the Locale Setting window:

1. Invoke the Merge Setup utility.

2. Click System-Wide Merge Administration and then click OK.

3. Click View/Modify Locale settings.

The current settings are shown. On the left is a list of Locales you can choose from, and on the right are the current NLS settings for Country, Codepage, and Keyboard:

• Country is set to the DOS country number of the selected locale.
• Codepage is set to the DOS code page number.
• Keyboard is set to the DOS keyboard code and optional keyboard identifier.

  The Keyboard setting that you pick from are the keyboard codes and identifiers that the DOS KEYB command uses. Some locales have several possible Keyboard settings. If you do not know the Keyboard setting to use, refer to your computer's documentation about the DOS KEYB command to use for your keyboard to work with DOS.

When SCO Merge is installed on a U.S. English system, or on a system for which it cannot automatically determine the UNIX NLS configuration, it is automatically configured for no DOS NLS support. In this case, the locale No Locale is highlighted, the Country and Codepage are zero, and there is no Keyboard setting.

Click OK to save any change you have made. If you change from No Locale to another setting, there will be a pause while SCO Merge rebuilds some files when you click OK. This process only takes a short time. New settings take effect for any new DOS or Windows sessions.

You can override these NLS settings by setting one or all of the UNIX environment variables COUNTRY, CODEPAGE, and KEYB. This way a user can have a different setting from the global setting. However, for this to work completely, the global setting cannot be No Locale.

The COUNTRY and KEYB variables are set to the same values shown in the Locale Settings window for Country and Keyboard. The CODEPAGE variable is set to the same value as the Codepage setting but with the two letters pc in front. E.g., pc437.

Windows 95 keyboard setup

WARNING:

The X Windows system and many Windows 95 locales use a second press of the the Caps-Lock key to toggle the keybopard out of Caps-Lock. (The Num-Lock and Scroll-Lock keys operate in a similar fashion.) But with some Windows 95 keyboard locales, (such ass Germany), you instead press a shift key to turn off Caps-Lock.

When you are running a Windows 95 session on an X windows display and Windows 95 is set to use one of these "different" keyboard locales, Merge tries to keep the Caps-Lock state of Windows 95 in agreement with the keyboard Caps-Lock indicator. But it can only do this if you do not press the shift key when Caps-Lock is on. So when the shift key is used when Caps-Lock is on, then Windows 95 will have Caps-Lock go off while the keyboard indicator is still on. To recover, press the Caps-Lock key a few times, or focus on another X window, and then focus back to the Windows 95 window.

• If you use the UNIX system to create file names using characters that do not exist in your current DOS code page, SCO Merge maps these file names to legal DOS names when you access them with DOS. For example, the UNIX file name ms-dos® might be mapped to MS-D'BDQ when you use DOS. SCO Merge maps this file name because the character ® exists in some UNIX code sets but does not exist in supported DOS code pages.

• You cannot use DOS to create file names on a UNIX file system drive using characters that do not exist in the UNIX code set. You can still create these files on a drive that uses a real DOS file system.

SCO Merge by default does not translate DOS text when you print. If the UNIX printer used for DOS printing does not support all the characters you send for printing, the results are unpredictable.

You cannot use the DOS MODE or CHCP commands to change the printer code page when you use a UNIX printer. However, when you use the UNIX print spooler, you can use the SCO Merge charconv command to translate DOS text files before you print them. For example, assume your DOS text file memo was created using DOS code page 850; you want to print it using the UNIX ISO standard code set (8859) and convert characters that do not exist in code set 8859 to the best multibyte approximation. You can convert memo using the command:

charconv /i pc850 /o 8859 /m /d memo memo.unx

You can then print the converted file using standard DOS or UNIX commands (for example, copy memo.unx lpt1).

You can also use the SCO Merge printer command to change the default UNIX print command that SCO Merge uses when you send DOS printer output to the UNIX spooler. For example, if you want to use the charconv command shown above whenever you print from DOS, you can issue the following command at the DOS prompt or in your autoexec.bat file:

printer unix "charconv -i pc850 -o 8859 -m -d | lp"

After you issue this printer command, all text files you print from DOS are converted automatically.

Refer to ``Converting text files'' for more information on the charconv command. See ``Using the printer command'' in Chapter 6 for more information on the printer command.

Instead of using the UNIX print spooler, you can attach a printer directly to your DOS process. When a printer is directly attached to DOS, you can use the DOS MODE or CHCP commands to change printer code pages and use the printer in all other ways exactly as you would with a conventional DOS computer. See ``Configuring printers for direct attachment'' in Chapter 5 for further information on setting up and using a directly attached printer.

Converting text files

When all characters in your text file exist in both the code page and the code set, the converted output looks exactly the same as your original, unconverted text file (except that it is now usable with a different operating system). When your original text file contains characters that do not exist in both the code page and code set, dos2unix and unix2dos by default convert untranslatable characters into asterisks (*).

You can modify the behavior of dos2unix and unix2dos by using the same options that apply to the charconv command, described in the next section.

Using charconv

The syntax of the charconv command is:

charconv [options] sourcefile [targetfile]

The source and target files must not be the same. When neither file parameter is specified, charconv prints a usage message to your screen. If you specify only one file parameter, that file is considered the source file, and the output is written to standard output.

charconv options

When issued from the UNIX command line, charconv options must be specified with a hyphen ( - ) rather than a slash ( / ). In the DOS environment, you can use either the slash or the hyphen. The examples in this appendix show the hyphen, which will work in either environment. You can use either uppercase or lowercase options both from the UNIX shell and in the DOS environment.

All of the options below can be set on the command line or with the CONVOPTS environment variable, which is described later.

-?

Displays a list of valid charconv options on your screen.

-7

Notifies you if charconv encounters any 8-bit characters and translates them to 7-bit characters. You cannot use this option with -b.

-a

Causes charconv to quit if it encounters a character it cannot translate accurately. This option overrides the -c, -m, and -s options, which allow inexact translations.

-b

Preserves 8-bit (binary) character representations. This option is on by default.

-c x

Specifies x as the character to use for untranslatable characters. The default character is an asterisk (*).

-d

Converts a file from DOS to UNIX format by removing carriage returns from the end of each line.

-i tbl

Identifies the code page or code set used for the input file. This option is required unless you use the -x option.

-o tbl

Identifies the code page or code set used for the output file. This option is required unless you use the -x option.

For example, if you wanted to convert a DOS file from code page 437 to code page 850, use the charconv command as follows:

charconv -i pc437 -o pc850 sourcefile targetfile

-l

Converts text to lowercase.

-m

Converts single, untranslatable characters into multibyte characters, if possible. For example, ¾ is converted to 3/4. (If a multibyte conversion is not possible, charconv uses the default untranslatable character -- see the -c option).

-p

Converts a text file from UNIX to DOS format by adding carriage returns to the end of each line.

-q

Quiet mode prevents charconv from printing warning messages and character translation statistics to your screen. This is the default. Use -q if necessary to override the -v option, which causes warning messages and conversion statistics to be displayed.

-s

Converts single, untranslatable characters into the best single-character translation. For example, the DOS graphic character for upper left corner is converted to +. (If there is no best single translation, charconv uses the default untranslatable character -- see the -c option).

-u

Converts text to uppercase.

-v

Displays warning messages and character conversion statistics on your screen.

-x

Specifies that charconv should not translate from code page to code set or the reverse. Use this command with the -d or -p options when you want to translate between the DOS and UNIX operating systems without changing code pages.

When you specify -x, charconv does not allow you to use the -i or -o options.

-z

Causes charconv to stop processing when it encounters the DOS end-of-file (EOF) character, ^Z. This option removes the end-of-file marker when text is converted from DOS to UNIX. By default, charconv converts the whole file.

For example, suppose you want to convert a series of files from code page 437 to code page 850 and make all of the characters uppercase.

If you use charconv in the DOS environment, set the CONVOPTS environment variable on the DOS command line as follows:

set convopts=/u /i pc437 /o pc850

If you use charconv at the UNIX shell, define the CONVOPTS variable as follows (this example assumes you use the Bourne shell):

CONVOPTS="-u -ipc437 -opc850"; export CONVOPTS

Now, you can just type the following line for each file:

charconv sourcefile targetfile

and charconv automatically converts from code page 437 to 850 and makes all characters uppercase.