Hi Pete, Em 02/01/2012 23:45, Pete Batard escreveu: > Are Korean and Farsi (Persian) keyboard layouts supported in FreeDOS? > Windows seems to require specific layouts for those, but I couldn't > find mention of "ko" or "fa" as supported by KEYB.EXE, so I commented > these out. Did I miss something?
Korean and persian keyboard layouts are not available for FreeDOS at the moment. Unfortunately, korean (as well as chinese and japanese) keyboard layouts are beyond my grasp. They require special handling. We have been lucky; there was a japanese FreeDOS user, a few years ago, who encoded one of the japanese keyboard layouts (seemingly the most popular) for FreeDOS. We would need to have the same luck again in what regards korean and chinese keyboards. In what comes to the persian language, though, I could help. 1) The codepage I could encode the IranSystem codepage into FreeDOS, seemingly popular on those DOS days -- but it lacks the arabic semicolon, the arabic percent sign, guillemets and the riyal currency sign. On the other hand, it provides all single, double and mixed linedraw characers, as well as shades and blocks, just like cp437. IBMDOS codepage 1098 for persian is a little better - the guillemets and the riyal currency sign are there but the arabic percent sign is still missing. The multiplication sign is also there. On the other hand, it only presents the same drawing characters available, for instance, on cp850: single, double, the 3 shade characters and 3 out of 5 block characters. There are lots of codepages devised for the arabic script for DOS which require special handling by some specially designed text editor because such codepages only provide the isolated shapes of the letters, implying that such applications (with or without the extra help of some TSR) would trade the isolated shapes of letters for the proper shapes as the user types the letters. There is no such TSR or text editor with such features for FreeDOS at the moment, therefore interesting codepages like arabic MS-DOS codepage 708 or DOS PASCII codepage (devised by the indian government on those old DOS days) must be left behind. A possible approach is for me to have a green light to devise a persian codepage myself, if that would suit you. As in what happens with IBMDOS cp1098, I would sacrifice mixed linedraw characters to encode a few missing characters both on IranSystem and cp1098, such as the afghan currency sign and the few arabic letters which aren't, in principle, part of the persian repertoire but are needed to type borrowed arabic words, like the ones which require tah marbuta. 2) The keyboard layout There is the Windows keyboard layout for persian. It would not be interesting because it presents arabic diacritics, which would not be possible to be typed in FreeDOS, so it would be quite crippled. There is the IBM keyboard layout for persian. It only presents the persian repertoire. Still, it presents guillemets, the arabic percent sign and the riyal currency sign. Some or all of them would be missing according to what I choose (IranSystem or cp1098). As with codepages, I could devise a persian keyboard layout myself. Henrique ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
