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Re: Configure country

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In message <912342665c.harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk>
 on 4 Oct 2025 Harriet Bazley  wrote:

> On 1 Oct 2025 as I do recall,
>           Jean-Michel  wrote:

> [snip]

>> By changing the keyboard in Configure Keyboard, we change Country and
>> therefore the keyboard.
>> From PRM3/p780:
>> "Remember that you should normally only need to change the country setting
>> as this will also change the keyboard."
>> The Country Russia command line is enough to use the keyboard with
>> !Netsurf

> Unfortunately for me it apparently isn't, because I don't get the right
> characters when I press the appropriate keys.
> Also, I suspect that any website into which you try to enter Cyrillic
> probably wouldn't recognise RISC OS 'Cyrillic encoding' but would expect
> Unicode of some flavour, but I haven't even managed to get that far....

If you manage to type or paste characters into a form in NetSurf and see 
Cyrillic, then you will be fine.  NetSurf is well aware of character 
encodings and will make sure that what is transmitted to the server is 
encoded in some form of Unicode where appropriate.

I have not met KeyMap (where do you get it?) but I have experimented with 
XChars from Martin Wuerthner.  It allows you to show fonts in different 
encodings. I have also just been trying out Chars version 2.05 which I 
hadn't explored before because our main day-to-day RISC OS computer is 
still on quite an old version of the operating system.

I can't offer any help on keyboards, but if you want to use Chars or 
XChars to enter characters into NetSurf, what I find is crucial is the 
alphabet setting.  NetSurf assumes (as all applications should) that the 
key values transmitted in the Key Pressed event (8) are encoded in the 
current alphabet.  You can view the current alphabet with *alphabet and 
the list of available alphabets with *alphabets.

If you change the alphabet to UTF8:
*alphabet utf8
and then run Chars, selecting a decent font with Cyrillic characters in 
(e.g. FreeSans or FreeSerif) then you can switch to UTF-8 encoding in 
Chars and the category Cyrillic.  You should then find that none of the 
characters are shown greyed out, and you can left click over any of them 
or press Shift to insert them into the keyboard stream.  What then happens 
is that the Wimp will send multiple Key Pressed events, each corresponding 
to a single byte of the UTF-8 encoding for the character, and 
knowledgeable applications like NetSurf will then do the right thing with 
them.

(I'd be interested to know if any applications other than NetSurf are 
aware of the current alphabet in this way. I happen to be developing one 
at the moment.)

Unfortunately, although NetSurf adapts immediately on the alphabet being 
changed, you would have to restart Chars for it to become aware.  If you 
switch the alphabet back to Latin1 and then click on a non-ASCII character 
in Chars, you will find two or three characters appearing in the keyboard 
stream corresponding to the UTF-8 bytes of a multi-byte character.

Another way of working is to set the alphabet to Latin1 initially and then 
start Chars or XChars.  Display the font you want, and pick an 8-bit 
encoding (so not UTF-8) that contains the characters you want to type 
(e.g. Cyrillic).  Then issue the command "*alphabet cyrillic", and you 
will find that Chars or XChars will send the correct key codes for NetSurf 
to pick them up and enter Cyrillic in the form.  It's a bit of a faff to 
issue the star command whenever you switch encoding in the Chars display.

It would be very nice if Chars had an automatic option whereby if you 
click on a character that is not supported in the current alphabet, Chars 
switches to an appropriate alphabet (or perhaps just UTF-8) transmits the 
key, and then switches back to the configured alphabet.  That would make 
entering unusual characters into NetSurf rather easier.

-- 
Matthew Phillips
Durham

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Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-09-08 23:14 +0100
  Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-09-09 09:39 +0100
    Re: Configure country Jean-Michel <jmc.bruck@orange.fr> - 2025-09-12 10:02 +0200
      Re: Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-09-12 13:57 +0200
      Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-09-12 15:26 +0100
        Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-09-29 17:13 +0100
          Re: Configure country Jean-Michel <jmc.bruck@orange.fr> - 2025-09-30 11:36 +0200
            Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-09-30 19:18 +0100
              Re: Configure country Paul Stewart <phorefaux@gmail.com> - 2025-09-30 20:38 +0100
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-09-30 22:40 +0100
                Re: Configure country Paul Stewart <paulstewart@phawfaux.co.uk> - 2025-10-03 22:26 +0100
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 01:02 +0100
              Re: Configure country J Peachey <john@jpeachey.co.uk> - 2025-09-30 20:00 +0000
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-09-30 22:42 +0100
                Re: Configure country Jean-Michel <jmc.bruck@orange.fr> - 2025-10-01 10:26 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 01:20 +0100
                Re: Configure country Jean-Michel <jmc.bruck@orange.fr> - 2025-10-04 10:16 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 13:41 +0100
                Re: Configure country Sniffer <sniffer@dewberryfields.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 14:50 +0100
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 18:08 +0100
                Re: Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-10-04 19:51 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 20:27 +0100
                Re: Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-10-04 12:17 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 13:19 +0100
                Re: Configure country Matthew Phillips <spam2011m@yahoo.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 13:18 +0100
                Re: Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-10-04 14:27 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 18:04 +0100
                Re: Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-10-04 19:47 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 20:23 +0100
                Re: Configure country druck <news@druck.org.uk> - 2025-10-04 20:40 +0100
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 18:50 +0100
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 18:47 +0100
                Re: Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-10-04 19:59 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 20:35 +0100
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-04 21:12 +0100
                Re: Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-10-04 23:33 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-05 10:30 +0100
                Re: Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-10-05 12:40 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-05 12:46 +0100
                Re: Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-10-05 17:54 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-05 13:27 +0100
                Configure country Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> - 2025-10-04 23:30 +0200
                Re: Configure country Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2025-10-05 10:19 +0100

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