Re: [Lynx-dev] French accents

[Kristopher Kycia]

Not sure this is a compilation issue anymore...  I think this is a DOS issue...  By default DOS has an ASCII table with all of the characters (or most - some newer Windows ones would not be supported).  This sounds like it has something to do with the fact that Lynx does not know what to do (in the case of the language).  I think the configuration defaulting to US-ASCII is hinting that it is pickup the default ASCII table. But the problem is that it is using "7 bit approximation" (whatever the hell that means...)  Somehow this is leading to the wrong characters mapping to the wrong ASCII values.

 

We would need someone who really understands how Lynx does the mapping with ASCII characters and how it interacts with the environment.

 

Further research has led to some very technical details...  And the problem is I'M NOT EVEN SURE LYNX WILL SUPPORT IT:

 

c:\config.sys

device=d:\path\display.sys con:=(ega,"See code below",1)

 

     437 United States
     850 Multilingual (supports 11 languages) = Latin I
     860 Portuguese
     863 French Canadian
     865 Norwegian

 

c:\autoexec.bat

nlsfunc c:\WINDOWS\system32\country.sys

mode con codepage prepare=((850)C:\WINDOWS\system32\ega.cpi)

lynx.bat

chcp 850

 

My current configuration (If I run CHCP from the DOS prompt) is 437 (United States).  Sounds like a probable reason for not finding the language specific stuff...

 

THE KEY:  Because Lynx is displaying STRANGE characters, it is finding getting mapping values from somewhere and lookup characters within the ASCII table.  However IT IS FINDING THE WRONG VALUES.

 

Because this is DOS, I think AT MOST the character table can contain 256 characters.  This is not Windows, where there can be UTF-8 values extending beyond.  So the solution to this problem is getting the mappings to point to the RIGHT characters.  I'm not even convince the CODEPAGE stuff would work...  I mean IT MIGHT (Latin I) and Western ISO-8859-1 = Latin I. But it's like a shot in the dark...

 

Anyhow, this is turning out to be a VERY COMPLEX PROBLEM...  The other problem is Windows XP doesn't have the DISPLAY.SYS file...  (Lovely).

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Kristopher Kycia

To: Andre-John Mas ; Sándor Halász ; address@hidden

Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 12:49 AM

Subject: Re: [Lynx-dev] French accents

>I'm just wondering if because it DEFAULTS to US-ASCII means that it is unable to pickup additional selections because something is missing.

 

Hmm...  I am thinking back to my OLD DOS days.  I am wondering if this has LESS to do with the Lynx DISTRO and more to do about my Windows configuration.

 

Way back in the good old days of DOS there used to be a SYSTEM LEVEL FILE named CONFIG.SYS.  And if my memory serves me right, there used to be configuration with regards to CHARSETs, LOCALS and CODEPAGES...  A DRIVER existed to enable ANSI and the likes...  Because this application RUNS from the DOS prompt, it is sounding more and more like an environment problem.  And the fact that now Lynx defaults US-ASCII makes me believe all the more that it is because it is unable to pickup any additional LANGUAGE INFORMATION.

 

Anybody here remember the GOOD OLD DAYS?

 

 

Kristopher R. Kycia