NAME

German, german − Introduction to German language support

DESCRIPTION

This reference page describes the codeset, locale, device, and other kinds of support for the German language. 

Codesets

The operating system supports the following coded character set (codeset) for German:

       •ISO 8859-1 (ISO Latin 1)

ISO8859-1 is the string that represents this codeset in the names of locales and other system files. 

See the iso8859-1(5) reference page for information on the ISO Latin 1 codeset.  See the i18n_intro(5) and l10n_intro(5) reference pages for introductory information on codesets. 

Locales

The operating system provides the following German locales for different countries:

       •de_CH.ISO8859-1, for Switzerland

       •de_DE.ISO8859-1, for Germany

You can use the locale command (see locale(1)) to find out if these locales are installed on your system. See i18n_intro(5) for information on setting locale. 

In a windows environment, you also need to set the session language.  The way you do this depends on which windows environment you are using:

       •In the Common Desktop environment (CDE), use the Language menu accessed from the login window Options button. 

       •In the DECwindows environment, use the Language Option dialog box invoked from the Session Manager’s Options menu. 

Keyboards

The operating system supports the following VT style and PC style keyboards with German characters printed on the keys:

For your keyboard to function correctly with your system, you must load a keyboard mapping table (keymap) that is appropriate for your keyboard’s model and language. If you load a keymap that does not correspond to your keyboard’s model and language, your keyboard behavior is unpredictable. The label located on the bottom surface of a keyboard usually specifies its model (five letter code) and language (two letter code). See the keyboard(5) reference page for general information on keymaps and instructions for loading them in different formats. The following tables supply German-specific information that you need when loading keymaps. 

Selecting keymaps in xkb format:

Selecting keymaps in xmodmap format:

Keyboards can have keys with characters printed on both the left and right half of the keycap. The way you set or use your keyboard to send different sets of characters varies from one keyboard model to another. Furthermore, your keyboard allows you to enter more characters than those printed on the keycaps. Refer to the keyboard(5) reference page for information on how to enter characters. 

Printers

PostScript fonts for languages supported by the ISO 8859-1 codeset must be printer resident. The operating system does not provide fonts that you can manually or dynamically download to a printer. 

Codeset Conversion

The following codeset converters are available for German:

       •cp437_ISO8859-1 (PC code-page format to ISO Latin-1)

       •cp437_UCS-2 (PC code-page format to UCS-2)

       •cp437_UCS-4 (PC code-page format to UCS-4)

       •cp437_UTF-8 (PC code-page format to UTF-8)

       •cp850_ISO8859-1 (PC code-page format to ISO Latin-1)

       •cp850_UCS-2 (PC code-page format to UCS-2)

       •cp850_UCS-4 (PC code-page format to UCS-4)

       •cp850_UTF-8 (PC code-page format to UTF-8)

       •ISO8859-1_cp437 (ISO Latin-1 to PC code-page format)

       •ISO8859-1_cp850 (ISO Latin-1 to PC code-page format)

       •ISO8859-1_UCS-2 (ISO Latin-1 to UCS-2)

       •ISO8859-1_UCS-4 (ISO Latin-1 to UCS-4)

       •ISO8859-1_UTF-8 (ISO Latin-1 to UTF-8)

       •UCS-2_cp437 (UCS-2 to PC code-page format)

       •UCS-2_cp850 (UCS-2 to PC code-page format)

       •UCS-2_ISO8859-1 (UCS-2 to ISO Latin-1)

       •UCS-4_cp437 (UCS-4 to PC code-page format)

       •UCS-4_cp850 (UCS-4 to PC code-page format)

       •UCS-4_ISO8859-1 (UCS-4 to ISO Latin-1)

       •UTF-8_cp437 (UTF-8 to PC code-page format)

       •UTF-8_cp850 (UTF-8 to PC code-page format)

       •UTF-8_ISO8859-1 (UTF-8 to ISO Latin-1)

For more information about codeset converters, see the iconv_intro(5) reference page. For information on PC code pages, see code_page(5). For information on UCS-2, UCS-4, and UTF-8, see Unicode(5). 

SEE ALSO

Commands: locale(1), lp(1), lpr(1), xset(1X), dl5100wrof(8), dl5100wrof(8), lpd(8), lprsetup(8)

Files: printcap(4)

Others: code_page(5).  i18n_intro(5), i18n_printing(5), iconv_intro(5), iso8859−1(5), keyboard(5), l10n_intro(5), unicode(5)

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