NAME

German, german − Introduction to German language support

DESCRIPTION

This reference page describes the coded character set (codeset), locale, device, and other kinds of support for the German language. 

Codesets

The operating system supports the following codesets for German by means of locales, codeset converters, or both:

       •ISO 8859-1 (ISO Latin-1)

ISO8859-1 is the string that represents this codeset in the names of locales and codeset converters. See iso8859-1(5) for more information. 

       •ISO 8859-15 (ISO Latin-9)

ISO8859-15 is the string that represents this codeset in the names of locales and codeset converters. See iso8859-15(5) for more information. 

       •UTF-16, UCS-4, and UTF-8

UTF-16, UCS-4, and UTF-8 are the strings that represent these encoding formats in names of locales and codeset converters. See Unicode(5) for more information. 

       •PC code pages

cp437, cp850, and cp1252 are the strings that represent these encoding formats in the names of codeset converters. See code_page(5) for more information. 

See i18n_intro(5) and l10n_intro(5) for introductory information on codesets. See iconv_intro(5) for information on codeset converters and how to use them. 

Locales

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

       •de_CH.ISO8859-1, de_CH.ISO8859-15, and de_CH.UTF-8, for Switzerland

       •de_DE.ISO8859-1, de_DE.ISO8859-15, and de_DE.UTF-8, for Germany

The de_CH.ISO8859-15 and de_CH.UTF-8 locales support the euro symbol for currency. The de_DE.ISO8859-15 and de_DE.UTF-8 locales use the euro symbol for currency. Because the .ISO8859-1 locale repertoire does not contain the euro symbol, de_CH.ISO8859-1 and de_DE.ISO8859-1 continue to use the marc currency symbol. 

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

In the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), you need to set a locale by setting the session language. To do this, from the Options menu of the Login window, choose Language. Then, from the Language options menu, choose a session language. 

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 keyboard(5) 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. See keyboard(5) for information on how to enter characters. 

Printers

PostScript fonts for languages supported by the ISO 8859-1 codeset are printer resident. 

See i18n_printing(5) for a discussion of printer support options. 

SEE ALSO

Commands: locale(1)

Others: code_page(5).  i18n_intro(5), i18n_printing(5), iconv_intro(5), iso8859−1(5), iso8859−15(5), keyboard(5), l10n_intro(5), unicode(5)

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