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Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2002 10:52:47 +0200
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To: Doug Kaufman <dkaufman AT rahul DOT net>
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In-reply-to: <a42fsq$rj0$1@samba.rahul.net> (message from Doug Kaufman on 9
	Feb 2002 06:34:02 GMT)
Subject: Re: GNU Emacs DOS (DJGPP) port converts upper-ASCII characters to ASCII 127
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> From: Doug Kaufman <dkaufman AT rahul DOT net>
> Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
> Date: 9 Feb 2002 06:34:02 GMT
> 
> Certainly with a
> default setup, this is true, but it is easy to add Latin-1 (codepage
> 819) or Cyrillic (codepage 915 = ISO 8859-5) support with the free
> iso codepage package from Kosta Kostis. This requires a VGA or SVGA
> display and the use of the DISPLAY.SYS driver. With this in place
> the codepage can be changed on the fly for any program that allows
> shelling out to DOS.

This still allows only one character set at any given time.  For
example, if you have a buffer in Latin-1 and another in Cyrillic,
you'd need to switch the codepage each time you switch the buffer.
What if you want both buffers displayed at the same time in two
different windows?  What if you want to mix them in the same buffer?

Emacs lets you do all that without any extra codepages, and without
switching them, albeit for a price of reduced legibility in some of
the languages.

> See:
> "http://www.kostis.net/freeware/isocp101.zip"
> or
> "http://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/doc/ISO/charsets/isocp101.zip"

Will those work in a Windows DOS box?  I doubt that.

Besides, asking people to mess with their system's display drivers is
not my idea of seamless package installation.  I've chosen the
specific method used by Emacs for supporting multiple character sets
because it doesn't require _anything_ from the user, as far as the
system setup is concerned.  I did consider using SVGA features for
nicer support of fonts (Emacs could generate characters itself,
without any need for external codepages), but dropped the idea after
learning that this won't work on Windows.  With most DJGPP users
working mostly on Windows these days, it just didn't make sense to
spend my time on a feature that 90% of users won't ever benefit from.