3.1118 character sets and multilingual keyboards (153)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Thu, 1 Mar 90 20:41:28 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1118. Thursday, 1 Mar 1990.


(1) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 90 10:05:00 EST (27 lines)
From: LAPLANTE@CC.UMONTREAL.CA
Subject: RE: 3.1113 character sets on PS/2? (46)

(2) Date: 1 Mar 90 10:19:43-EST (40 lines)
From: HAHNE@UTOREPAS
Subject: Re.: 3.1113 Multinational character-set support IBM PC's

(3) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 90 15:47 MET (25 lines)
From: "Pieter C. Masereeuw" <PIETER@ALF.LET.UVA.NL>
Subject: RE: Multinational character-set support on IBM PS/2s

(4) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 90 14:05 EDT (29 lines)
From: RKENNER@Vax2.Concordia.CA
Subject: French Characters on PC's

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 90 10:05:00 EST
From: LAPLANTE@CC.UMONTREAL.CA
Subject: RE: 3.1113 character sets on PS/2? (46)

What you seem to want looks a lot like the standard DOS 3.3
French Canadian keyboard emulator. It is a small program, part
of the DOS as released by IBM (actually it is a more general
program that allows to emulate different keyboards), that is
activated when you boot by a call from CONFIG.SYS.

Once loaded, this program allows the user to switch from the
emulated keyboard back to the American original keyboard and
vice-versa at any time.

In case you don't know, the French Canadian keyboard is a
QWERTY keyboard that allows for the use of all the French diacritics
that are part of the extended ASCII (that is, almost all of them)
without the need to ask them through the use of the numeric keypad.

You should be able to get the program you need (KEYBOARD.COM) from
your IBM dealer as well as the stickers to customize the keyboards.

Benoit Laplante
Departement de sociologie
Universite de Montreal
LAPLANTE@CC.UMONTREAL.CA
LAPLANTE@UMTLVR.BITNET
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------50----
Date: 1 Mar 90 10:19:43-EST
From: HAHNE@UTOREPAS
Subject: Re.: 3.1113 Multinational character-set support IBM PC's

The question of how to enter accented characters on IBM PC's was raised
by CHAA006@VAXA.RHBNC.AC.UK. Unfortunately there is no universally
accepted solution for all software. There are several ways the problem
has been dealt with, any of which are more convenient than using the
<ALT> plus number key combination:

1. Keystroke macros. Using a shareware program like Newkey or a
commercial one like Prokey, you can assign any sequence of keys to any
other key. You could set up the <ALT> keys to produce all of the
accented characters. With Word Perfect 5, you would use these macros to
automatically operate the the "Compose" feature which allows you to
enter non-ASCII characters. In Word Perfect version 4, you could assign
the <ALT> and <CNTL> keys to represent other characters, including the
extended ASCII characters.

2. Alternate keyboards. Some programs allow you to switch to a
completely new keyboard layout on the fly, thus allowing entry of
special characters not found on the normal keyboard. This is available
in Word Perfect 5, Nota Bene, Megawriter, T3, etc.

3. Dead keys are used by some programs such as Nota Bene. In this case
you press a special key which creates an accent but does not move the
cursor. When you enter a vowel, the combination character is produced
on the screen.

4. Other programs allow you to enter the vowel and the acccent and
automatically produce the combination character on the screen. This is
similar to what you are used to on the VAXmate. This method is used by
LIBRARY MASTER, a textual database manager with multilingual capabilities
and automatic bibliography generation. You enter the vowel, then press
the overstrike key, then the accent and the accented character is
produced on the screen. Printer character translation tables make sure
that these special characters print out properly. A similar arrangement
is used by Scripture Fonts, for using Greek and Hebrew with Word Perfect.


Harry Hahne <HAHNE@UTOREPAS>
Wycliffe College, University of Toronto
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 90 15:47 MET
From: "Pieter C. Masereeuw" <PIETER@ALF.LET.UVA.NL>
Subject: RE: Multinational character-set support on IBM PS/2s

In reply to the query about Multinational character-sets on PS/2
machines (I deleted the mail and don't remember the sender's name):

I made a solution for that problem for ordinary PC-s by making a small
modification of the BIOS keyboard driver. To make an accented letter,
you type the accent (single quote, double quote, tilde, and so on) and
then the letter, just like we did when typewriters were still with us.

The program (called DEADKEYS) works with any MS-DOS application that
does not redefine the BIOS driver (and most standard applications don't
do that). It was designed to work with the american keyboard. If it
does not work for PS/2 machines (whether or not with OS/2), it should
not be too hard to adapt it.

Let me know if you are interested in a (free) copy of the (MASM) source.

Pieter C. Masereeuw
University of Amsterdam
Computer Dept. of the Faculty of Arts

pieter@alf.let.uva.nl

(4) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 90 14:05 EDT
From: RKENNER@Vax2.Concordia.CA
Subject: French Characters on PC's

For those desiring an easy way to enter French characters from
the keyboard on an IBM, I am afraid that I have bad news. Unless
someone posts information I have not come across, there is no
generic way to enter these characters. Many programs will come
up with their own routines for entering the characters, but they
are seldom standard. The [ALT] + ascii code combination does not
work from within all program either.
I feel that the designers of the PC would subconciously rather that
we all just change our languages to adapt to 26 Roman letters with
no diacritics. For those of us that insist, they were kind enough to
provide some extra characters for most of the European languages as
part of the built-in character set. (In that they must be applauded,
as most computers of the time did not even provide this.). No one
ever gave any thought to entering these characters from the keyboard.
If you are interested, I have written a routine in BASIC which can
allow for keyboard entry of French characters, using a two-keystroke
approach: letter + accent. It can easily be adapted to other
languages, but will only be helpful in original programming. It
will not help you with your text editor or word processor.
(You face an even greater problem in getting printers to all agree
on how to print the characters.)
Roger Kenner
Concordia University, Montreal
RKENNER@VAX2.CONCORDIA.CA