Consultor Eletrônico

DOS 6.22 language enhancements, support for Russian, etc

Helpful hints for users of certain Eastern European languages,
Russian, Greek, French Canadian, Bulgarian, Serbia/Montenegro,
Turkish, Nordic, and Slavic languages.

SYMPTOM: Running under Russian Windows, ran into a variety of file
naming problems - the files created in Windows had their names
modified by DOS, and they became unreadable because you couldn't
type the new (garbled) filename.

SOLUTION: Microsoft just started supporting Russian and some other
languages in DOS 6.22.

We should probably insist that customers use 6.22 or later DOS
(check by typing "VER" at the DOS prompt).

They also should use the settings mentioned below.

DOS 6.22 Language Enhancements
------------------------------

With DOS 6.22, Microsoft added some essential enhancements,
without which it is nearly impossible to work in a bilingual
environment, such as Russian/English.

1. KEYBRD2.SYS file contains support for the above languages.
Earlier English versions of DOS do not support these keyboards
at all.

2. EGA3.CPI contains code pages for the above languages.

3. With the above two enhancements, file names will appear
properly on the display, and they can be selected in Windows, but
it will be impossible to type Russian file names in DOS.

The third enhancement is bilingual keyboard support. For Russian,
for example, the sequence ALT-LEFT SHIFT selects the Latin keyboard,
and ALT-RIGHT SHIFT selects Cyrillic. In order to type, under DOS,
the name PYCCKN.TXT (where PYCCKN is replaced by similar-looking
Cyrillic characters), here is the sequence:

enter ALT-RIGHT SHIFT (to go into Cyrillic)
enter the Russian name
enter ALT-LEFT SHIFT (to go into English)
enter .TXT

Since these operations are impossible under DOS 6.20, we recommend
that all customers use DOS 6.22 when using these languages.

It is also important to select the code pages properly.

Here are some of the required settings for bilingual Russian/English:
CONFIG.SYS
COUNTRY = 7,866, C:\DOS\COUNTRY.SYS

AUTOEXEC.BAT
C:\DOS\MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE=((866) C:\DOS\EGA3.CPI)
C:\DOS\MODE CON CODEPAGE SELECT=866
C:\DOS\KEYB ru,,C:\DOS\KEYBRD2.SYS
C:\DOS\MODE CON CODEPAGE /STA
(The last command is to check status after setting the modes).

For more information see the file C:\DOS\COUNTRY.TXT

PROGRESS Settings
-----------------

In Progress, the calling parameters should reflect the following
settings for Russian:

-CPINTERNAL 1251 -CPSTREAM IBM866 -CPCOLL RUSSIAN

Progress Software Technical Support Note # 14170