set-language(3)

NAME

set-language - Set the current language

SYNOPSIS

set-language "language"

DESCRIPTION

set-language sets the current language in MicroEmacs. The language setting affects the following areas:-

• ASCII characters belonging to the alphabetic letter set, affecting commands such as forward-word(2).
• ASCII characters which may be displayed on the screen
• The rules and dictionaries that spell(2) uses.

The standard release of MicroEmacs '99 supports the following languages:-

    American 
    American (Ext) 
    British 
    British (Ext) 

The extended languages (Ext) are identical to their base languages except spell(2) uses the extended dictionary in addition to the basic dictionary, doubling the dictionary size.

Other languages have been supported by MicroEmacs '99, i.e. French, Spanish.

NOTES

To support a new language the following steps should be taken:-

1)


Decide on the name of the language and the pseudo file name (maximum 8 characters long) to be used ("Dutch" and "dutch" say).

2)


Create a dictionary for the language ("dutch.edf"), see add-dictionary(2).

3)


Create the set of spell rules for the language, see add-spell-rule(2). Save these in the macro file "dutchr.emf" say, this file should also include the following definitions:-

; define the rule-init command to initialize the language 
define-macro rules-init 
!emacro 
; Get a list of rule letters which are used 
set-variable %spell-rules "HIJLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" 
; reset the spell rules 
0 add-spell-rule 
; Now add the dutch spell rules 
2 add-spell-rule "J" "e" "e" "\xEDsimo" ; grande grand'isimo 
. 
. 

Note the empty rules-init command must be defined, the rule file may be large (Spanish is 4000 lines) and should only be loaded on demand, not by default at start-up. Defining the empty rules-init command and using the define-macro-file(2) command is the method employed by MicroEmacs to load the rule file on demand.

4)


Create the main language macro file ("dutch.emf") which is executed when the Spanish language is set, typically at start-up. This macro file should contain any required key translations (see translate-key(2)), in addition to word and display character changes (see set-char-mask(2)). The macro file adds the dictionary and creates the hook to the rule file:-

; Create any key translations required to insert accent letters 
translate-key "A-C-[" 0x94 
. 
. 
; Add the standard dictionary 
add-dictionary "dutch" 

; expand the normal letter range to include the accent letters, 
; make sure they're disablyable, pokable 
set-char-mask "dpa" "\xC1\xE1Aa\xC9\xE9Ee..." 

0 define-macro language-tidy 
    -1 set-char-mask "a" "\xC1\xE1\xC9\xE9..." 
!emacro 

0 define-macro-file dutchr spell-rules-init 

Note the language-tidy command MUST be defined and should restore any changes it may have made to the character sets.

5)


Add the language to language.emf so other commands such as user-setup(3) and spell-buffer(3) can use it. There are two variables that must be changed, the language name must be added to %language-names and the pseudo file name (with a single digit argument to be given to the execution of the setup macro file) to %language-val, i.e.:-

set-variable %language-names "|American|American (Ext)... 
    ...|British|British (Ext)|Dutch|" 
set-variable %language-val   "|1american|2american... 
    ...|1british|2british|1dutch|" 

SEE ALSO

user-setup(3), spell-buffer(3), translate-key(2), set-char-mask(2).

(c) Copyright JASSPA 1999
Last Modified: 1999/08/25
Generated On: 1999/12/01