National Language Support Overview for Devices

National Language Support (NLS) uses the locale setting to define its environment. The locale setting is dependent on the user's requirements for data processing and language that determines input and output device requirements. The system administrator is responsible for configuring devices that are in agreement with user locales.

For information about specific devices, read:

• Terminals (tty Devices)
• Printers
• Low-function terminals (LFTs)

Terminals (tty Devices)

The setmaps command is used to set the terminal and code-set map for a given tty or pty. The setmaps file format defines the text of the code-set map file and the terminal map file.

The text of a code set map file is a description of the code set, including the type (single byte or multibyte), the memory and screen widths (for multibyte code sets), and the optional converter modules to push on the stream. The code set map file is located in the /usr/lib/nls/csmap directory and has the same name as the code set.

The terminal-map-file rules associate a pattern string with a replacement string. The operating system uses an input map file to map input from the keyboard to an application and uses an output map file to map output from an application to the display.

Printers

Virtual printers inherit the default code set of incoming jobs from the LANG entry in the /etc/environment file. A printer subsystem can support several virtual printers. If more than one virtual printer is supported, each can have a different code set. There are three suggested printer subsystem scenarios:

• The first scenario involves several queues, several virtual printers, and one physical printer. Each virtual printer has its own code set. The print commands specify which queue to use. The queue in turn specifies the virtual printer with the appropriate code set. In this scenario, the user needs to know which queue is attached to which virtual printer and the code set that is associated with each.
• The second scenario is similar to the first, but each virtual printer is attached to a different printer.
• The third scenario involves using the qprt print command to specify the code set. In this option, there are several queues available and one virtual printer. The virtual printer uses the inherited default code set.

The user specifies the queue and code set by using the qprt command with the -P-x flags. If the -P flag is not specified, the default queue is used. If the -x flag is not used, the default code set for the virtual printer is used.

Low-Function Terminals

Key Maps

Low-function terminals (LFTs) support single-byte code-set languages using key maps. An LFT key map translates a key stroke into a character string in the code set. A list of all available key maps is in the /usr/lib/nls/loc directory. LFT does not support languages that require multibyte code sets.

The default LFT keyboard setting and associated font setting are based on the language selected during installation. The possible default code sets are:

• ISO8859-1
• ISO8859-2
• ISO8859-5
• ISO8859-6
• ISO8859-7
• ISO8859-8
• ISO8859-9

There are several ways to change the default settings:

• To change the default font for next reboot, use the chfont command with the -n flag.
• To change the default keyboard for next reboot, use the chkbd command with the -n flag.

The lsfont and lskbd commands list all the fonts and keyboard maps that are currently available to the LFT.

Fonts

The LFT font libraries for all the supported code sets are in the /usr/lpp/fonts directory.