Code Page

 A code page is simply a character set.  Code page support was added to
 DOS 3.3 to make it possible for DOS to be translated into international
 languages.  DOS also makes it possible for a program to be written in a
 "language-independent" manner; for instance, there are DOS functions which
 help you to sort a list of text strings that contain international
 characters such as É and Ç.

 Code page support provides a "behind-the-scenes" way to process non-
 English keystrokes and a way to reprogram EGA and VGA adapters to display
 certain characters that are not defined by standard IBM-compatible
 hardware.  It also provides some limited printer font-definition support.

 Code pages (character sets) defined and supported in DOS include:

           CodePage Language
           ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
           437      US et.al.
           850      Multilingual (Latin I)
           852      Slavic (Latin II)
           860      Portuguese
           863      Canadian French
           866      Norwegian and Danish

 Here is some information relevant to code pages:

 ■ The CONFIG.SYS file contains a COUNTRY= directive which selects a
   default code page and country information file.  See also fn 65H.

 ■ One or more DEVICE= directives in CONFIG.SYS install 'code page
   aware' device drivers DISPLAY.SYS or PRINTER.SYS.

 ■ The '.CPI' files that come with DOS contain 'Code Page Information'
   for a selected device.  See Code Page Font Files.

 ■ The Nlsfunc command installs code page switching (optionally
   overriding the country information file set in CONFIG.SYS) and must
   be used before any code page activities take place.

 ■ The Mode and Chcp commands (3.3+) can prepare and select a code page.
   You can perform the same functions as Mode via fn 440cH (but it is a
   pain). And you can use fn 6602H to activate a prepared code page.

 ■ When you 'prepare' a code page via the Mode command, the information
   in the .CPI file is used to redefine a font.  For instance, the '$'
   character can be changed into the '£' character.  This takes place at
   the device driver level via Fn 44H (IOCTL) commands.  For the EGA,
   the appropriate INT 10H BIOS calls are made to redefine the character
   set.  For a printer, a character set can be downloaded into it and
   selected as the default.

 Code Page Font Files describes the layout of the font-definition files
 used by code page aware device drivers.

See Also: National Language Support
          fn 44H (IOCTL functions)
          fn 66H (code page switching)
          Code Page Font Files
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