.TH CHARSET 1 "10 Aug 1998" "Console tools" "Linux User's Manual"

.SH NAME
charset \- Set an ACM for use in one of the G0/G1 charset slots.

.SH SYNOPSIS
.BI "charset [" -v "] " G0 | G1 " [" cp437 | iso01 | vt100 | user | <acm_name> ]

.SH DESCRIPTION
The linux console has 2 slots for charsets, labeled
.I G0
and
.IR G1 .
.B charset
changes the slot in use by the current VT to either
.I G0
or
.IR G1 ,
and fills the slot either with one of the 3 predefined ACMs
.RI ( cp437 ", " iso01 ", " vt100 )
or with a user-defined ACM.

You can ask for the current user-defined ACM by specifying
.IR user ,
or ask a new ACM to be loaded from a file into the user slot, by
specifying a filename.

You will note that, although each VT has its own slot settings, there
is only one user-defined ACM for all the VTs.  That is, whereas you
can have tty1 using 
.I G0=cp437
and
.IR G1=vt100 ,
at the same time as tty2 using
.I G0=iso01
and
.I G1=iso02
(user-defined), you
.B cannot
have at the same time tty1 using 
.I iso02
and tty2 using
.IR iso03 .
This is a limitation of the linux kernel.

Note that you can emulate such a setting using the
.BR filterm (1)
utility, with your console in UTF8-mode, by telling
.B filterm
to translate screen output on-the-fly to UTF8.

You'll find
.BR filterm (1)
in the
.BR konwert (1)
package, by Marcin Kowalczyk, which is available from
.IR http://qrczak.home.ml.org/ .

.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.I -v
be verbose.
.B charset
will then print what it does as it does it.

.SH BUGS

.B charset
cannot determine which of the 2 slots is in use at a given time, so
you have to tell him which one you want, even if you don't want to
change to the other one.  This is a limitation of the console driver.

.SH "SEE ALSO"

.BR consolechars (8),
.BR unicode_start (1),
.BR filterm (1).