NAME

French, french − Introduction to French language support

DESCRIPTION

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

Codesets

The operating system supports the following codesets for French 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. 

       •UCS-2, UCS-4, and UTF-8

UCS-2, UCS-4, ucs4, and UTF-8 are the strings that represent these encoding formats in the names of locales and codeset converters. See Unicode(5) for more information. 

       •PC code-page formats

cp437, cp850, cp863, and cp1252 are the strings that represent these encoding formats in the names of locales and codeset converters. See code_page(5) for more information. 

See the i18n_intro(5) and l10n_intro(5) reference pages for introductory information on codesets. The iconv_intro(5) reference page discusses codeset converters and how to use them. 

French Locales

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

       •fr_BE.ISO8859-1, fr_BE.ISO8859-15, and fr_BE.UTF-8 for Belgium

       •fr_CA.ISO8859-1 and fr_CA.ISO8859-15 for Canada

       •fr_FR.ISO8859-1, fr_FR.ISO8859-15, and fr_FR.UTF-8 for France

Of these locales, only the .ISO8859-15 and .UTF-8 locales support the Eeuro currency sign. 

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 from the operating system command line. 

For the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), you set locale by setting the session language. To do this, use the Language menu accessed from the Options button on the Login window. 

Keyboards

The operating system supports the following VT style and PC style keyboards with French 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 French-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 are printer resident. 

SEE ALSO

Commands:locale(1), lp(1)

Others: code_page(5), euro(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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