Re: LYNX-DEV Lynx ported to Win32 and charsets...

[Even Holen]

On Thu, Jul 31, 1997 at 06:04:50PM +0000, Christopher R. Maden wrote:
> [Even Holen]
> > I've just downloaded the port of Lynx for Win32 and started out to
> > test it and very soon I've discovered that this version didn't
> > respect my keyboard settings.
> > 
> > I'm living in Norway and uses a default locale of Norwegian(bokmal)
> > with Norwegian layout of keyboard. But when using Lynx it seems to
> > think that I'm using some sort of american keyboard...
> 
> What version of Windows are you using?  How did you set up your
> keyboard?  (Did it just work in Norwegian "out of the box"?)

I'm using Win NT 4.0 (1381). I have tried four alternatives for the
keyboard settings:

Short   : Input Locale : Keyboard Layout
 EN (1) : English(US)  : US
 NO (1) : Norwegian(Bokmal) : Norwegian
 EN (2) : English(US)  : Norwegian
 NO (2) : Norwegian(Bokmal) : US

When I in a DOS window type the keys from j moving towards the return
key I get the following using the different settings:
EN(1) : jkl;'\JKL:"|
NO(1) : jkløæ'JKLØÆ* 
EN(2) : jkløæ'JKLØÆ* 
NO(2) : jkl;'\JKL:"|

Typing the same at the prompt asking for a URL (after pressing g in
lynx):
EN(1): jkl`'/JKL~"? 
NO(1): jkl;'\JKL:"| 
EN(2): jkl;'\JKL:"| 
NO(2): jkl`'/JKL~"?

As one sees it seems like both DOS and lynx seem to ignore the locale
setting and use only the keyboard layout setting. (This since NO(1) and
EN(2) are identical and the same with EN(1) and NO(2))

In addition the keys to left of n and o produces the following with
lynx:
EN(1): nm,./NM<>?op[]OP{} 
NO(1): nm,.-NM<>_op];OP}:

The English version is OK, but the Norwegian version should have
produced:
 nm,.-NM;:_opå¨OPÅ^
(where the ¨(diaresis) and the ^(caret) is deadkeys...)

> I am using Windows 95, and in the Keyboard control panel, the language
> "English (United States)" is associated with keyboard layout "United
> States-Dvorak".  While the DOS shell does not pick that up, Lynx is
> definitely aware that I'm using a Dvorak keyboard.

Lynx seems to be aware that there is a different keyboard settings but
it does not change it correctly as shown in my examples.

> You can't really switch fonts in DOS (well, you can sort of, but not
> character sets); you're stuck with the IBM code page for your locale.
> What did you set your "display (C)haracter set" to in the (o)ptions
> page?  I'm using "IBM PC character set", and all of the lower-case
> accented characters are displayed correctly.  &Oslash; and &oslash;,
> unfortunately, are not part of the US IBM character set.  Lynx
> approximates &oslash; with a phi, and &Oslash; as a capital O.

I've tried "IBM PC character set" and "IBM PC Codepage 850" and "ISO
Latin 1" and the MS Windows CP... The IBM PC character set is the one
which most accurate. It got &oslash; (ø) although it's not the nicest
character I've seen (the baseline is to high, it should be seated on the
baseline like the 'o').

I tried display the following line in the different charsets:
æøåÆØÅ õëàäá
That is in html entities (and descriptive):
aelig, oslash, aring, AElig, Oslash, Aring, o with tilde, diaresis e, 
   a with acute (`), a with diaresis, a with grave (´).
In IBM PC character set : 
  æøåÆOÅ oëàäá  where the ø really is a mathemical symbol for the
                empty set. A flattend o which is raised and got a slash
                (Maybe it's a version of the greek character phi)

In IBM PC Codepage 850 :
  æ&cent;åÆ&yen;Å &Sigma;ëàäá  where &sigma; is the mathematical symbol
                               used in summations

In ISO latin 1:
  Chaos!!! One line pr. character
  æ equals µ or micro
  ø equals ° or the degree sign
  å equals the greek character sigma  (lowercase)
  ÆØÅ equals various line characters
  õ equals the lower part of an integral sign
  ë equals the lowercase delta
  à equals the lowercase alpha
  ä equals the uppercase Sigma
  á equals the lowercase beta

In other words rather difficult to read.

> Does Norwegian DOS use a different codepage?  (I would hope so, for
> the slashed O.)  Lynx probably needs some minor work to support that
> code page.  Klaus?

Norwegian might use both 850 and 865. But both these use to function
properly when using plain DOS and no windows.

Doug Kaufman wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Jul 1997, Klaus Weide wrote:
>> Wayne had some notes on using codepage 850 (he was recommending it), but I
>> couldn't find them now at http://www.fdisk.com/.  Anyway, that CP 850
>> contains all the ISO-8859-1 characters.  And it has &Oslash; and &oslash;
>> just in the positions where CP 437 ("US IBM character set") has &yen;
>> and &cent;.  So it seems that this would be the right Display Character
>> Set to use - at least as far as these two characters are concerned.
>
>Codepage 850 has all the ISO-8859-1 charcters, but doesn't have them in
>the correct position.  The codepage for ISO-8859-1 is CP 819.  At least
>in the United States, it doesn't come with MSDOS.  You can get it at
>"ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/doc/ISO/charsets/isocp101.zip";.

I haven't tried the 819 codepage. But I do believe that in plain DOS
this is _not_ compatible with the Norwegian keyboard drivers... :(
Whether this actually functions within Windows I do not know, but I
would very much like to use if it does... 

Hope this gives you some more hints to follow when trying to solve the
problem. And I really hope that all the characters survive through the
mail system. It ought to do so since I'm using MIME... At least it
should do so if you display iso-8859-1 properly... :-)

Regards,
Even Holen
-- 
<><   Even Holen, address@hidden, http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~evenh/   :-)
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