Hi,

> On May 11, 2022, at 3:56 AM, Daniel D. <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I hope this is the correct mailing list to contact. 
> 
> Recently, I've done some Norwegian translations of the language files
> of FreeDOS, which have been merged into this repository
> https://github.com/shidel/fd-nls (is this an "official" repo?).

At present, the short answer is yes. FD-NLS [1] is more or less the “official” 
repo for translations. 

Although not all developers back-port the those translations to their 
individual sources. The translations there are used to update the packages that 
are included in the official software download repository [2] and the FreeDOS 
release media [3].

At some point, we may move (or just mirror) FD-NLS over to GitLab to be 
included with the package staging repository [4].

> 
> Now that I've added a few translations, I thought that I should
> probably also test them on a working system. However, I am not entirely
> sure how to do that. I also note that these translations require
> code page 857, because of the Nordic characters Æ, Ø and Å. 
> 
> Is it as easy as copying the translated files into C:\FreeDOS\NLS and
> then changing a config file somewhere to use the translated files? 

Mostly.

First, you need to configure the system for the proper codepage. Probably 
adding/replacing the portion regarding the displayed language settings in 
FDAUTO.BAT with these will do it…

set LANG=NO

LH DISPLAY CON=(EGA,,1)
MODE CON CP PREP=((857) %DOSDIR%\CPI\EGA.CPX)
MODE CON CP SEL=857
MODE CON CP REFRESH

Then you can just copy NLS files to C:\FreeDOS\NLS. If there are also 
translated help files, those go into C:\FreeDOS\HELP. However, there are a 
couple things to note. 

First, some programs (like CTMOUSE) will not use them. The translations 
actually get compiled in. At least when looking at FD-NLS, you can identify 
those fairly easily. Their translations are stored under a “source” not “nls” 
sub-directory.

Some other programs (like FreeCOM, IMGEDIT and a few others) do not use the 
“normal” NLS system. Many of those use various utilities to glue translations 
onto the executable. 

Second, for those that do use the normal method for NLS, they use CODEPAGE 
formatted files and most/all will not support UTF-8 directly. So, you will need 
to convert them from UTF-8 to CODEPAGE. Those converted files should also be 
added to the FD-NLS project. 

When I eventually finish working on the FD-NLS Desktop App (for Mac, Linux and 
Windows [5]), it will handle the conversions to/from CODEPAGE and UTF-8 formats 
for the individual program translations. At present, it only supports editing 
for the Package Descriptions. That is text seen in FDIMPLES and other programs 
which describes the individual packages.  

I don’t have an international keyboard. So, the current CODEPAGE map for 
Norwegian in the FD-NLS App needs edited. This is relatively easy to do in the 
application itself. Simply go to the language settings for Norwegian and click 
the edit button next to the CODEPAGE setting. This will bring up a dialog with 
the CP857 mapping. Just look the list and compare the DOS character to the UTF 
character. Nearly all such differences are above ASCII Value 126 When one does 
not match. Select it and simply type the correct character. When finished click 
OK. 

If you decide to update that CP map, be sure to submit it to the FD-NLS 
project. It is stored under (repo)/fd-nls/codepages. Eventually, the App will 
handle that kind of thing automatically. 

> 
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Daniel
> 

:-)

Jerome

[1] FreeDOS Translation Project - https://github.com/shidel/fd-nls 
<https://github.com/shidel/fd-nls> 
[2] Software Download Repository - 
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/indexes.html
 
<https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/indexes.html>
 
[3] FreeDOS Release Downloads - https://freedos.org/download/ 
<https://freedos.org/download/> 
[4] The FreeDOS Archive - https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS 
<https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS>
[5] FD-NLS Desktop App - https://up.lod.bz <https://up.lod.bz/> 

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