(emacs.info) Single-Byte European Support

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(emacs.info) Defining Fontsets

(emacs.info) International

 
 Single-byte European Character Support
 ======================================
 
    The ISO 8859 Latin-N character sets define character codes in the
 range 160 to 255 to handle the accented letters and punctuation needed
 by various European languages.  If you disable multibyte characters,
 Emacs can still handle _one_ of these character codes at a time.  To
 specify _which_ of these codes to use, invoke `M-x
 set-language-environment' and specify a suitable language environment
 such as `Latin-N'.
 
    For more information about unibyte operation, see  Enabling
 Multibyte.  Note particularly that you probably want to ensure that
 your initialization files are read as unibyte if they contain non-ASCII
 characters.
 
    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 through fontsets, in effect by displaying the equivalent
 multibyte characters according to the current language environment.  To
 request this, set the variable
 `unibyte-display-via-language-environment' to a non-`nil' value.
 
    If your terminal does not support display of the Latin-1 character
 set, Emacs can display these characters as ASCII sequences which at
 least give you a clear idea of what the characters are.  To do this,
 load the library `iso-ascii'.  Similar libraries for other Latin-N
 character sets could be implemented, but we don't have them yet.
 
    Normally non-ISO-8859 characters (between characters 128 and 159
 inclusive) are displayed as octal escapes.  You can change this for
 non-standard `extended' versions of ISO-8859 character sets by using the
 function `standard-display-8bit' in the `disp-table' library.
 
    There are three different ways you can input single-byte non-ASCII
 characters:
 
    * If your keyboard can generate character codes 128 and up,
      representing non-ASCII characters, execute the following
      expression to enable Emacs to understand them:
 
           (set-input-mode (car (current-input-mode))
                           (nth 1 (current-input-mode))
                           0)
 
    * You can use an input method for the selected language environment.
       Input Methods.  When you use an input method in a unibyte
      buffer, the non-ASCII character you specify with it is converted
      to unibyte.
 
    * For Latin-1 only, you can use the key `C-x 8' as a "compose
      character" prefix for entry of non-ASCII Latin-1 printing
      characters.  `C-x 8' is good for insertion (in the minibuffer as
      well as other buffers), for searching, and in any other context
      where a key sequence is allowed.
 
      `C-x 8' works by loading the `iso-transl' library.  Once that
      library is loaded, the <ALT> modifier key, if you have one, serves
      the same purpose as `C-x 8'; use <ALT> together with an accent
      character to modify the following letter.  In addition, if you
      have keys for the Latin-1 "dead accent characters", they too are
      defined to compose with the following character, once `iso-transl'
      is loaded.
 

Info Catalog

(emacs.info) Defining Fontsets

(emacs.info) International