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authorDaniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>2024-04-07 16:37:15 +0000
committerDaniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>2024-04-07 16:37:15 +0000
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+
+Summary
+=======
+This document is primarily for people who will be using Lynx
+on a remote UNIX or VMS system via an MS-DOS based terminal program.
+
+
+General Information
+===================
+Lynx comes with built-in translation tables to map the 8-bit character codes or
+character entities coming in from an HTML document to their equivalent codes,
+where possible, for various character sets.
+
+IMPORTANT: you should choose display character set in Lynx Options Menu
+according to your font installed locally. Probably it would be cpXXX. Please
+contact lynx-dev mailing list if you want any new codepage not listed there.
+
+Note that all points of the connection between the display at your end and Lynx
+at the remote end must be 8-bit clean. If the high bit is being stripped at
+any point in between, the only character set you can use (effectively) in Lynx
+will be "7 bit approximations". More on that later.
+
+
+MS-DOS character set weirdness
+==============================
+MS-DOS uses a bass-ackwards character set in which half the normal characters
+have been replaced by pseudo-graphic line and box-drawing characters, and in
+which almost all of the international characters are mapped to nonstandard
+numbers. It also contains Greek letters.
+
+Further confusing matters, there is more than one MS-DOS character set. The
+character sets are referred to as "codepages," each of which has a unique
+number. IBM PCs and compatibles come with one hardware-based default codepage
+and a keyboard to match. In the US market the hardware codepage is 437. PCs
+destined for other regions of the world often have a different default codepage
+which contains characters for other languages and keyboards. Under MS-DOS, one
+can load different codepages into memory and use one of them instead of the
+hardware default.
+
+If you are using Lynx through an MS-DOS based terminal program or telnet
+client, you should use an appropriate DOS codepage in Lynx and you need not any
+translation within terminal program (this is different from old-style behavior
+and works better because of superior Lynx translation support).
+
+Check your display by accessing Martin Ramsch's ISO-8859-1 table
+(iso8859-1.html in the Lynx distribution's test subdirectory).
+
+Ramsch's table describes each entity and shows examples of each. It should be
+immediately obvious that you are either seeing what you are supposed to, or
+you're not. If you see box and line-drawing characters and mismatched letters
+and so on, you are likely displaying 7 bit data, not 8. Ensure that all points
+of your connection are 8-bit clean:
+
+ On any remote UNIX systems you must pass through, do
+ 'stty cs8 -istrip' or 'stty pass8'. 'stty -a' should list
+ your settings.
+ On any remote VMS systems, do 'set terminal /eightbit'.
+ Make sure your terminal program or telnet client is not filtering
+ 8-bit data. You may found the choice between "VT-100 strict"
+ and "VT-100 relaxed" emulation mode - use relaxed.
+ Note: Procomm for DOS has a confusing "Use 7 bit or 8 bit
+ ANSI" setting -- this has to do with ANSI sequences. If set to
+ 8 bit, some 8-bit character sequences, including those passed
+ by Lynx as well as those which are for your terminal type
+ (vt100, etc.) will be processed by Procomm as ANSI screen
+ control codes and will most likely result in a garbled display.
+ Set it to 7 bit.
+ If going through a dialup terminal server, you may have to set the
+ terminal server itself to pass 8 bit data. How to do this
+ varies with the make of the server, and in some cases only a
+ system admin in charge of the box will have the authorization
+ to do that.
+ SLIP or PPP connections should already be 8-bit clean.
+