LOCALES.SYS enables MiniVMDOS to use country-specific conventions for displaying times, dates, and currency; for determining the order by which characters are sorted; and for determing which characters can be used in filenames. You can use this command only in your CONFIG.SYS file.

The LOCALES command configures MiniVMDOS to recognize the character set and punctuation conventions observed when using one of the supported languages.

COUNTRY=xxx[,[yyy][,[drive:][path]filename]]

Parameters

xxx

Specifies the country code.

yyy

Specifies the character set for the country.

[drive:][path]filename

Specifies the location and name of the file containing country information.

Specifying supported languages

The following table lists each country or language supported by MiniVMDOS. The table also lists the character sets you can use with each country code. For example, if you use country code 003, you can use only character set 437 or 850 for the yyy parameter. The first of the two character sets listed for each country or language is its default character set.

Country or language    Country       Character sets
                       code
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Belgium                032           850, 437
Brazil                 055           850, 437
Canadian-French        002           863, 850
Croatia                038           852, 850
Czech Republic         042           852, 850
Denmark                045           850, 865
Finland                358           850, 437
France                 033           850, 437
Germany                049           850, 437
Hungary                036           852, 850
International          061           437, 850
English
Italy                  039           850, 437
Latin America          003           850, 437
Netherlands            031           850, 437
Norway                 047           850, 865
Poland                 048           852, 850
Portugal               351           850, 860
Serbia/Yugoslavia      038           852, 850
Slovakia               042           852, 850
Slovenia               038           852, 850
Spain                  034           850, 437
Sweden                 046           437, 850
Switzerland            041           850, 437
United Kingdom         044           437, 850
United States          001           437, 850

To convert international currency, time, date, and case to French conventions, add the following command to your CONFIG.SYS file:

COUNTRY=033

For this example, assume that the LOCALES.SYS file is in the root directory of the startup drive. If LOCALES.SYS is in a different location, you would specify the location in [drive:]path on the command line.

To specify a character set with the country code for France, type the following:

COUNTRY=033,850

If you omit the character set but include the [drive:][path] filename parameter, you must still type the comma that would have preceded the character set, as the following example shows:

COUNTRY=033,,C:\BIN\LOCALES.SYS

Starts the KEYS program, which configures a keyboard for a specific language. Use KEYS to configure a keyboard for a language other than United States English.

keys [xx][+!-]

Parameters

keys xx

Specifies the code for a keyboard layout. See the table at the end of this topic for a list of valid values for this parameter.

keys xx+

Forces the keyboard program to assume an enhanced (101/102/104 key) keyboard.

keys xx-

Forces the keyboard program to assume a standard (83/84 key) keyboard.

The following table shows the valid values for xx for each country or language supported:

Country or         Keyboard layout
language           (xx value)
-------------------------------------

Belgium            be
Brazil             br
Canadian-French    cf
Czechoslovakia     cz
(Czech)
Czechoslovakia     sl
(Slovak)
Denmark            dk
Finland            su
France             fr
Germany            gr
Hungary            hu
Italy              it
Latin America      la
Netherlands        nl
Norway             no
Poland             pl
Portugal           po
Spain              sp
Sweden             sv
Switzerland        sf
(French)
Switzerland        sg
(German)
United Kingdom     uk
United States      us
Yugoslavia         yu