(recode.info)IBM-PC


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IBM's PC code
=============

   This charset is available in `recode' under the name `IBM-PC', with
`dos', `MSDOS' and `pc' as acceptable aliases.  The shortest way of
specifying it in `recode' is `pc'.

   The charset is aimed towards a PC microcomputer from IBM or any
compatible.  This is an eight-bit code.  This charset is fairly old in
`recode', its tables were produced a long while ago by mere inspection
of a printed chart of the IBM-PC codes and glyph.

   It has `CR-LF' as its implied surface.  This means that, if the
original end of lines have to be preserved while going out of `IBM-PC',
they should currently be added back through the usage of a surface on
the other charset, or better, just never removed.  Here are examples
for both cases:

     recode pc..l2/cl < INPUT > OUTPUT
     recode pc/..l2 < INPUT > OUTPUT

   RFC 1345 brings into `recode' 44 `IBM' charsets or code pages, and
also 8 other code pages.  You can get a list of these all these by
executing:(1)

     recode -l | egrep -i '(CP|IBM)[0-9]'

All charset or aliases beginning with letters `CP' or `IBM' also have
`CR-LF' as their implied surface.  The same is true for a purely
numeric alias in the same family.  For example, all of `819', `CP819'
and `IBM819' imply `CR-LF' as a surface.  Note that `ISO-8859-1' does
_not_ imply a surface, despite it shares the same tabular data as `819'.

   There are a few discrepancies between this `IBM-PC' charset and the
very similar RFC 1345 charset `ibm437', which have not been analysed
yet, so the charsets are being kept separate for now.  This might
change in the future, and the `IBM-PC' charset might disappear.
Wizards would be interested in comparing the output of these two
commands:

     recode -vh IBM-PC..Latin-1
     recode -vh IBM437..Latin-1

The first command uses the charset prior to RFC 1345 introduction.
Both methods give different recodings.  These differences are annoying,
the fuzziness will have to be explained and settle down one day.

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1) On DOS/Windows, stock shells do not know that apostrophes quote
special characters like `|', so one need to use double quotes instead
of apostrophes.


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