mbyte.txt For Vim version 7.4. Last change: 2013 May 18LINK

VIM REFERENCE MANUAL by Bram Moolenaar et al.

Multi-byte support multibyte multi-byteLINK

Chinese Japanese KoreanLINK

This is about editing text in languages which have many characters that can

not be represented using one byte (one octet). Examples are Chinese, Japanese

and Korean. Unicode is also covered here.

For an introduction to the most common features, see usr_45.txt in the user

manual.

For changing the language of messages and menus see mlang.txt.

{not available when compiled without the +multi_byte feature}

1. Getting started mbyte-first

2. Locale mbyte-locale

3. Encoding mbyte-encoding

4. Using a terminal mbyte-terminal

5. Fonts on X11 mbyte-fonts-X11

6. Fonts on MS-Windows mbyte-fonts-MSwin

7. Input on X11 mbyte-XIM

8. Input on MS-Windows mbyte-IME

9. Input with a keymap mbyte-keymap

10. Using UTF-8 mbyte-utf8

11. Overview of options mbyte-options

NOTE: This file contains UTF-8 characters. These may show up as strange

characters or boxes when using another encoding.

==============================================================================

1. Getting started mbyte-firstLINK

This is a summary of the multibyte features in Vim. If you are lucky it works

as described and you can start using Vim without much trouble. If something

doesn't work you will have to read the rest. Don't be surprised if it takes

quite a bit of work and experimenting to make Vim use all the multi-byte

features. Unfortunately, every system has its own way to deal with multibyte

languages and it is quite complicated.

COMPILING

If you already have a compiled Vim program, check if the +multi_byte feature

is included. The :version command can be used for this.

If +multi_byte is not included, you should compile Vim with "normal", "big" or

"huge" features. You can further tune what features are included. See the

INSTALL files in the source directory.

LOCALE

First of all, you must make sure your current locale is set correctly. If

your system has been installed to use the language, it probably works right

away. If not, you can often make it work by setting the $LANG environment

variable in your shell:

setenv LANG ja_JP.EUC

Unfortunately, the name of the locale depends on your system. Japanese might

also be called "ja_JP.EUCjp" or just "ja". To see what is currently used:

:language

To change the locale inside Vim use:

:language ja_JP.EUC

Vim will give an error message if this doesn't work. This is a good way to

experiment and find the locale name you want to use. But it's always better

to set the locale in the shell, so that it is used right from the start.

See mbyte-locale for details.

ENCODING

If your locale works properly, Vim will try to set the 'encoding' option

accordingly. If this doesn't work you can overrule its value:

:set encoding=utf-8

See encoding-values for a list of acceptable values.

The result is that all the text that is used inside Vim will be in this

encoding. Not only the text in the buffers, but also in registers, variables,

etc. This also means that changing the value of 'encoding' makes the existing

text invalid! The text doesn't change, but it will be displayed wrong.

You can edit files in another encoding than what 'encoding' is set to. Vim

will convert the file when you read it and convert it back when you write it.

See 'fileencoding', 'fileencodings' and ++enc.

DISPLAY AND FONTS

If you are working in a terminal (emulator) you must make sure it accepts the

same encoding as which Vim is working with. If this is not the case, you can

use the 'termencoding' option to make Vim convert text automatically.

For the GUI you must select fonts that work with the current 'encoding'. This

is the difficult part. It depends on the system you are using, the locale and

a few other things. See the chapters on fonts: mbyte-fonts-X11 for

X-Windows and mbyte-fonts-MSwin for MS-Windows.

For GTK+ 2, you can skip most of this section. The option 'guifontset' does

no longer exist. You only need to set 'guifont' and everything should "just

work". If your system comes with Xft2 and fontconfig and the current font

does not contain a certain glyph, a different font will be used automatically

if available. The 'guifontwide' option is still supported but usually you do

not need to set it. It is only necessary if the automatic font selection does

not suit your needs.

For X11 you can set the 'guifontset' option to a list of fonts that together

cover the characters that are used. Example for Korean:

:set guifontset=k12,r12

Alternatively, you can set 'guifont' and 'guifontwide'. 'guifont' is used for

the single-width characters, 'guifontwide' for the double-width characters.

Thus the 'guifontwide' font must be exactly twice as wide as 'guifont'.

Example for UTF-8:

:set guifont=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-18-120-100-100-c-90-iso10646-1

:set guifontwide=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-18-120-100-100-c-180-iso10646-1

You can also set 'guifont' alone, Vim will try to find a matching

'guifontwide' for you.

INPUT

There are several ways to enter multi-byte characters:

- For X11 XIM can be used. See XIM.

- For MS-Windows IME can be used. See IME.

- For all systems keymaps can be used. See mbyte-keymap.

The options 'iminsert', 'imsearch' and 'imcmdline' can be used to chose

the different input methods or disable them temporarily.

==============================================================================

2. Locale mbyte-localeLINK

The easiest setup is when your whole system uses the locale you want to work

in. But it's also possible to set the locale for one shell you are working

in, or just use a certain locale inside Vim.

WHAT IS A LOCALE? localeLINK

There are many of languages in the world. And there are different cultures

and environments at least as much as the number of languages. A linguistic

environment corresponding to an area is called "locale". This includes

information about the used language, the charset, collating order for sorting,

date format, currency format and so on. For Vim only the language and charset

really matter.

You can only use a locale if your system has support for it. Some systems

have only a few locales, especially in the USA. The language which you want

to use may not be on your system. In that case you might be able to install

it as an extra package. Check your system documentation for how to do that.

The location in which the locales are installed varies from system to system.

For example, "/usr/share/locale" or "/usr/lib/locale". See your system's

setlocale() man page.

Looking in these directories will show you the exact name of each locale.

Mostly upper/lowercase matters, thus "ja_JP.EUC" and "ja_jp.euc" are

different. Some systems have a locale.alias file, which allows translation

from a short name like "nl" to the full name "nl_NL.ISO_8859-1".

Note that X-windows has its own locale stuff. And unfortunately uses locale

names different from what is used elsewhere. This is confusing! For Vim it

matters what the setlocale() function uses, which is generally NOT the

X-windows stuff. You might have to do some experiments to find out what

really works.

locale-nameLINK

The (simplified) format of locale name is:

language

or language_territory

or language_territory.codeset

Territory means the country (or part of it), codeset means the charset. For

example, the locale name "ja_JP.eucJP" means:

ja the language is Japanese

JP the country is Japan

eucJP the codeset is EUC-JP

But it also could be "ja", "ja_JP.EUC", "ja_JP.ujis", etc. And unfortunately,

the locale name for a specific language, territory and codeset is not unified

and depends on your system.

Examples of locale name:

charset language locale name

GB2312 Chinese (simplified) zh_CN.EUC, zh_CN.GB2312

Big5 Chinese (traditional) zh_TW.BIG5, zh_TW.Big5

CNS-11643 Chinese (traditional) zh_TW

EUC-JP Japanese ja, ja_JP.EUC, ja_JP.ujis, ja_JP.eucJP

Shift_JIS Japanese ja_JP.SJIS, ja_JP.Shift_JIS

EUC-KR Korean ko, ko_KR.EUC

USING A LOCALE

To start using a locale for the whole system, see the documentation of your

system. Mostly you need to set it in a configuration file in "/etc".

To use a locale in a shell, set the $LANG environment value. When you want to

use Korean and the locale name is "ko", do this:

sh: export LANG=ko

csh: setenv LANG ko

You can put this in your ~/.profile or ~/.cshrc file to always use it.

To use a locale in Vim only, use the :language command:

:language ko

Put this in your ~/.vimrc file to use it always.

Or specify $LANG when starting Vim:

sh: LANG=ko vim {vim-arguments}

csh: env LANG=ko vim {vim-arguments}

You could make a small shell script for this.

==============================================================================

3. Encoding mbyte-encodingLINK

Vim uses the 'encoding' option to specify how characters are identified and

encoded when they are used inside Vim. This applies to all the places where

text is used, including buffers (files loaded into memory), registers and

variables.

charset codesetLINK

Charset is another name for encoding. There are subtle differences, but these

don't matter when using Vim. "codeset" is another similar name.

Each character is encoded as one or more bytes. When all characters are

encoded with one byte, we call this a single-byte encoding. The most often

used one is called "latin1". This limits the number of characters to 256.

Some of these are control characters, thus even fewer can be used for text.

When some characters use two or more bytes, we call this a multi-byte

encoding. This allows using much more than 256 characters, which is required

for most East Asian languages.

Most multi-byte encodings use one byte for the first 127 characters. These

are equal to ASCII, which makes it easy to exchange plain-ASCII text, no

matter what language is used. Thus you might see the right text even when the

encoding was set wrong.

encoding-namesLINK

Vim can use many different character encodings. There are three major groups:

1 8bit Single-byte encodings, 256 different characters. Mostly used

in USA and Europe. Example: ISO-8859-1 (Latin1). All

characters occupy one screen cell only.

2 2byte Double-byte encodings, over 10000 different characters.

Mostly used in Asian countries. Example: euc-kr (Korean)

The number of screen cells is equal to the number of bytes

(except for euc-jp when the first byte is 0x8e).

u Unicode Universal encoding, can replace all others. ISO 10646.

Millions of different characters. Example: UTF-8. The

relation between bytes and screen cells is complex.

Other encodings cannot be used by Vim internally. But files in other

encodings can be edited by using conversion, see 'fileencoding'.

Note that all encodings must use ASCII for the characters up to 128 (except

when compiled for EBCDIC).

Supported 'encoding' values are: encoding-valuesLINK

1 latin1 8-bit characters (ISO 8859-1, also used for cp1252)

1 iso-8859-n ISO_8859 variant (n = 2 to 15)

1 koi8-r Russian

1 koi8-u Ukrainian

1 macroman MacRoman (Macintosh encoding)

1 8bit-{name} any 8-bit encoding (Vim specific name)

1 cp437 similar to iso-8859-1

1 cp737 similar to iso-8859-7

1 cp775 Baltic

1 cp850 similar to iso-8859-4

1 cp852 similar to iso-8859-1

1 cp855 similar to iso-8859-2

1 cp857 similar to iso-8859-5

1 cp860 similar to iso-8859-9

1 cp861 similar to iso-8859-1

1 cp862 similar to iso-8859-1

1 cp863 similar to iso-8859-8

1 cp865 similar to iso-8859-1

1 cp866 similar to iso-8859-5

1 cp869 similar to iso-8859-7

1 cp874 Thai

1 cp1250 Czech, Polish, etc.

1 cp1251 Cyrillic

1 cp1253 Greek

1 cp1254 Turkish

1 cp1255 Hebrew

1 cp1256 Arabic

1 cp1257 Baltic

1 cp1258 Vietnamese

1 cp{number} MS-Windows: any installed single-byte codepage

2 cp932 Japanese (Windows only)

2 euc-jp Japanese (Unix only)

2 sjis Japanese (Unix only)

2 cp949 Korean (Unix and Windows)

2 euc-kr Korean (Unix only)

2 cp936 simplified Chinese (Windows only)

2 euc-cn simplified Chinese (Unix only)

2 cp950 traditional Chinese (on Unix alias for big5)

2 big5 traditional Chinese (on Windows alias for cp950)

2 euc-tw traditional Chinese (Unix only)

2 2byte-{name} Unix: any double-byte encoding (Vim specific name)

2 cp{number} MS-Windows: any installed double-byte codepage

u utf-8 32 bit UTF-8 encoded Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646-1)

u ucs-2 16 bit UCS-2 encoded Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646-1)

u ucs-2le like ucs-2, little endian

u utf-16 ucs-2 extended with double-words for more characters

u utf-16le like utf-16, little endian

u ucs-4 32 bit UCS-4 encoded Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646-1)

u ucs-4le like ucs-4, little endian

The {name} can be any encoding name that your system supports. It is passed

to iconv() to convert between the encoding of the file and the current locale.

For MS-Windows "cp{number}" means using codepage {number}.

Examples:

:set encoding=8bit-cp1252

:set encoding=2byte-cp932

The MS-Windows codepage 1252 is very similar to latin1. For practical reasons

the same encoding is used and it's called latin1. 'isprint' can be used to

display the characters 0x80 - 0xA0 or not.

Several aliases can be used, they are translated to one of the names above.

An incomplete list:

1 ansi same as latin1 (obsolete, for backward compatibility)

2 japan Japanese: on Unix "euc-jp", on MS-Windows cp932

2 korea Korean: on Unix "euc-kr", on MS-Windows cp949

2 prc simplified Chinese: on Unix "euc-cn", on MS-Windows cp936

2 chinese same as "prc"

2 taiwan traditional Chinese: on Unix "euc-tw", on MS-Windows cp950

u utf8 same as utf-8

u unicode same as ucs-2

u ucs2be same as ucs-2 (big endian)

u ucs-2be same as ucs-2 (big endian)

u ucs-4be same as ucs-4 (big endian)

u utf-32 same as ucs-4

u utf-32le same as ucs-4le

default stands for the default value of 'encoding', depends on the

environment

For the UCS codes the byte order matters. This is tricky, use UTF-8 whenever

you can. The default is to use big-endian (most significant byte comes

first):

name bytes char

ucs-2 11 22 1122

ucs-2le 22 11 1122

ucs-4 11 22 33 44 11223344

ucs-4le 44 33 22 11 11223344

On MS-Windows systems you often want to use "ucs-2le", because it uses little

endian UCS-2.

There are a few encodings which are similar, but not exactly the same. Vim

treats them as if they were different encodings, so that conversion will be

done when needed. You might want to use the similar name to avoid conversion

or when conversion is not possible:

cp932, shift-jis, sjis

cp936, euc-cn

encoding-tableLINK

Normally 'encoding' is equal to your current locale and 'termencoding' is

empty. This means that your keyboard and display work with characters encoded

in your current locale, and Vim uses the same characters internally.

You can make Vim use characters in a different encoding by setting the

'encoding' option to a different value. Since the keyboard and display still

use the current locale, conversion needs to be done. The 'termencoding' then

takes over the value of the current locale, so Vim converts between 'encoding'

and 'termencoding'. Example:

:let &termencoding = &encoding

:set encoding=utf-8

However, not all combinations of values are possible. The table below tells

you how each of the nine combinations works. This is further restricted by

not all conversions being possible, iconv() being present, etc. Since this

depends on the system used, no detailed list can be given.

('tenc' is the short name for 'termencoding' and 'enc' short for 'encoding')

'tenc' 'enc' remark

8bit 8bit Works. When 'termencoding' is different from

'encoding' typing and displaying may be wrong for some

characters, Vim does NOT perform conversion (set

'encoding' to "utf-8" to get this).

8bit 2byte MS-Windows: works for all codepages installed on your

system; you can only type 8bit characters;

Other systems: does NOT work.

8bit Unicode Works, but only 8bit characters can be typed directly

(others through digraphs, keymaps, etc.); in a

terminal you can only see 8bit characters; the GUI can

show all characters that the 'guifont' supports.

2byte 8bit Works, but typing non-ASCII characters might

be a problem.

2byte 2byte MS-Windows: works for all codepages installed on your

system; typing characters might be a problem when

locale is different from 'encoding'.

Other systems: Only works when 'termencoding' is equal

to 'encoding', you might as well leave it empty.

2byte Unicode works, Vim will translate typed characters.

Unicode 8bit works (unusual)

Unicode 2byte does NOT work

Unicode Unicode works very well (leaving 'termencoding' empty works

the same way, because all Unicode is handled

internally as UTF-8)

CONVERSION charset-conversionLINK

Vim will automatically convert from one to another encoding in several places:

- When reading a file and 'fileencoding' is different from 'encoding'

- When writing a file and 'fileencoding' is different from 'encoding'

- When displaying characters and 'termencoding' is different from 'encoding'

- When reading input and 'termencoding' is different from 'encoding'

- When displaying messages and the encoding used for LC_MESSAGES differs from

'encoding' (requires a gettext version that supports this).

- When reading a Vim script where :scriptencoding is different from

'encoding'.

- When reading or writing a viminfo file.

Most of these require the +iconv feature. Conversion for reading and

writing files may also be specified with the 'charconvert' option.

Useful utilities for converting the charset:

All: iconv

GNU iconv can convert most encodings. Unicode is used as the

intermediate encoding, which allows conversion from and to all other

encodings. See http://www.gnu.org/directory/libiconv.html.

Japanese: nkf

Nkf is "Network Kanji code conversion Filter". One of the most unique

facility of nkf is the guess of the input Kanji code. So, you don't

need to know what the inputting file's charset is. When convert to

EUC-JP from ISO-2022-JP or Shift_JIS, simply do the following command

in Vim:

:%!nkf -e

Nkf can be found at:

http://www.sfc.wide.ad.jp/~max/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/nkf-1.62.tar.gz

Chinese: hc

Hc is "Hanzi Converter". Hc convert a GB file to a Big5 file, or Big5

file to GB file. Hc can be found at:

ftp://ftp.cuhk.hk/pub/chinese/ifcss/software/unix/convert/hc-30.tar.gz

Korean: hmconv

Hmconv is Korean code conversion utility especially for E-mail. It can

convert between EUC-KR and ISO-2022-KR. Hmconv can be found at:

ftp://ftp.kaist.ac.kr/pub/hangul/code/hmconv/

Multilingual: lv

Lv is a Powerful Multilingual File Viewer. And it can be worked as

charset converter. Supported charset: ISO-2022-CN, ISO-2022-JP,

ISO-2022-KR, EUC-CN, EUC-JP, EUC-KR, EUC-TW, UTF-7, UTF-8, ISO-8859

series, Shift_JIS, Big5 and HZ. Lv can be found at:

http://www.ff.iij4u.or.jp/~nrt/lv/index.html

mbyte-conversionLINK

When reading and writing files in an encoding different from 'encoding',

conversion needs to be done. These conversions are supported:

- All conversions between Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1), UTF-8, UCS-2 and UCS-4 are

handled internally.

- For MS-Windows, when 'encoding' is a Unicode encoding, conversion from and

to any codepage should work.

- Conversion specified with 'charconvert'

- Conversion with the iconv library, if it is available.

Old versions of GNU iconv() may cause the conversion to fail (they

request a very large buffer, more than Vim is willing to provide).

Try getting another iconv() implementation.

iconv-dynamicLINK

On MS-Windows Vim can be compiled with the +iconv/dyn feature. This means

Vim will search for the "iconv.dll" and "libiconv.dll" libraries. When

neither of them can be found Vim will still work but some conversions won't be

possible.

==============================================================================

4. Using a terminal mbyte-terminalLINK

The GUI fully supports multi-byte characters. It is also possible in a

terminal, if the terminal supports the same encoding that Vim uses. Thus this

is less flexible.

For example, you can run Vim in a xterm with added multi-byte support and/or

XIM. Examples are kterm (Kanji term) and hanterm (for Korean), Eterm

(Enlightened terminal) and rxvt.

If your terminal does not support the right encoding, you can set the

'termencoding' option. Vim will then convert the typed characters from

'termencoding' to 'encoding'. And displayed text will be converted from

'encoding' to 'termencoding'. If the encoding supported by the terminal

doesn't include all the characters that Vim uses, this leads to lost

characters. This may mess up the display. If you use a terminal that

supports Unicode, such as the xterm mentioned below, it should work just fine,

since nearly every character set can be converted to Unicode without loss of

information.

UTF-8 IN XFREE86 XTERM UTF8-xtermLINK

This is a short explanation of how to use UTF-8 character encoding in the

xterm that comes with XFree86 by Thomas Dickey (text by Markus Kuhn).

Get the latest xterm version which has now UTF-8 support:

http://invisible-island.net/xterm/xterm.html

Compile it with "./configure --enable-wide-chars ; make"

Also get the ISO 10646-1 version of various fonts, which is available on

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/download/ucs-fonts.tar.gz

and install the font as described in the README file.

Now start xterm with

xterm -u8 -fn -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1

or, for bigger character:

xterm -u8 -fn -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1

and you will have a working UTF-8 terminal emulator. Try both

cat utf-8-demo.txt

vim utf-8-demo.txt

with the demo text that comes with ucs-fonts.tar.gz in order to see

whether there are any problems with UTF-8 in your xterm.

For Vim you may need to set 'encoding' to "utf-8".

==============================================================================

5. Fonts on X11 mbyte-fonts-X11LINK

Unfortunately, using fonts in X11 is complicated. The name of a single-byte

font is a long string. For multi-byte fonts we need several of these...

Note: Most of this is no longer relevant for GTK+ 2. Selecting a font via

its XLFD is not supported; see 'guifont' for an example of how to

set the font. Do yourself a favor and ignore the XLFD and xfontset

sections below.

First of all, Vim only accepts fixed-width fonts for displaying text. You

cannot use proportionally spaced fonts. This excludes many of the available

(and nicer looking) fonts. However, for menus and tooltips any font can be

used.

Note that Display and Input are independent. It is possible to see your

language even though you have no input method for it.

You should get a default font for menus and tooltips that works, but it might

be ugly. Read the following to find out how to select a better font.

X LOGICAL FONT DESCRIPTION (XLFD)

XLFDLINK

XLFD is the X font name and contains the information about the font size,

charset, etc. The name is in this format:

FOUNDRY-FAMILY-WEIGHT-SLANT-WIDTH-STYLE-PIXEL-POINT-X-Y-SPACE-AVE-CR-CE

Each field means:

- FOUNDRY: FOUNDRY field. The company that created the font.

- FAMILY: FAMILY_NAME field. Basic font family name. (helvetica, gothic,

times, etc)

- WEIGHT: WEIGHT_NAME field. How thick the letters are. (light, medium,

bold, etc)

- SLANT: SLANT field.

r: Roman (no slant)

i: Italic

o: Oblique

ri: Reverse Italic

ro: Reverse Oblique

ot: Other

number: Scaled font

- WIDTH: SETWIDTH_NAME field. Width of characters. (normal, condensed,

narrow, double wide)

- STYLE: ADD_STYLE_NAME field. Extra info to describe font. (Serif, Sans

Serif, Informal, Decorated, etc)

- PIXEL: PIXEL_SIZE field. Height, in pixels, of characters.

- POINT: POINT_SIZE field. Ten times height of characters in points.

- X: RESOLUTION_X field. X resolution (dots per inch).

- Y: RESOLUTION_Y field. Y resolution (dots per inch).

- SPACE: SPACING field.

p: Proportional

m: Monospaced

c: CharCell

- AVE: AVERAGE_WIDTH field. Ten times average width in pixels.

- CR: CHARSET_REGISTRY field. The name of the charset group.

- CE: CHARSET_ENCODING field. The rest of the charset name. For some

charsets, such as JIS X 0208, if this field is 0, code points has

the same value as GL, and GR if 1.

For example, in case of a 16 dots font corresponding to JIS X 0208, it is

written like:

-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-110-100-100-c-160-jisx0208.1990-0

X FONTSET

fontset xfontsetLINK

A single-byte charset is typically associated with one font. For multi-byte

charsets a combination of fonts is often used. This means that one group of

characters are used from one font and another group from another font (which

might be double wide). This collection of fonts is called a fontset.

Which fonts are required in a fontset depends on the current locale. X

windows maintains a table of which groups of characters are required for a

locale. You have to specify all the fonts that a locale requires in the

'guifontset' option.

NOTE: The fontset always uses the current locale, even though 'encoding' may

be set to use a different charset. In that situation you might want to use

'guifont' and 'guifontwide' instead of 'guifontset'.

Example:

|charset| language "groups of characters"

GB2312 Chinese (simplified) ISO-8859-1 and GB 2312

Big5 Chinese (traditional) ISO-8859-1 and Big5

CNS-11643 Chinese (traditional) ISO-8859-1, CNS 11643-1 and CNS 11643-2

EUC-JP Japanese JIS X 0201 and JIS X 0208

EUC-KR Korean ISO-8859-1 and KS C 5601 (KS X 1001)

You can search for fonts using the xlsfonts command. For example, when you're

searching for a font for KS C 5601:

xlsfonts | grep ksc5601

This is complicated and confusing. You might want to consult the X-Windows

documentation if there is something you don't understand.

base_font_name_listLINK

When you have found the names of the fonts you want to use, you need to set

the 'guifontset' option. You specify the list by concatenating the font names

and putting a comma in between them.

For example, when you use the ja_JP.eucJP locale, this requires JIS X 0201

and JIS X 0208. You could supply a list of fonts that explicitly specifies

the charsets, like:

:set guifontset=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-140-jisx0208.1983-0,

\-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-70-jisx0201.1976-0

Alternatively, you can supply a base font name list that omits the charset

name, letting X-Windows select font characters required for the locale. For

example:

:set guifontset=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-140,

\-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-70

Alternatively, you can supply a single base font name that allows X-Windows to

select from all available fonts. For example:

:set guifontset=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*

Alternatively, you can specify alias names. See the fonts.alias file in the

fonts directory (e.g., /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/). For example:

:set guifontset=k14,r14

E253LINK

Note that in East Asian fonts, the standard character cell is square. When

mixing a Latin font and an East Asian font, the East Asian font width should

be twice the Latin font width.

If 'guifontset' is not empty, the "font" argument of the :highlight command

is also interpreted as a fontset. For example, you should use for

highlighting:

:hi Comment font=english_font,your_font

If you use a wrong "font" argument you will get an error message.

Also make sure that you set 'guifontset' before setting fonts for highlight

groups.

USING RESOURCE FILES

Instead of specifying 'guifontset', you can set X11 resources and Vim will

pick them up. This is only for people who know how X resource files work.

For Motif and Athena insert these three lines in your $HOME/.Xdefaults file:

Vim.font: base_font_name_list

Vim*fontSet: base_font_name_list

Vim*fontList: your_language_font

Note: Vim.font is for text area.

Vim*fontSet is for menu.

Vim*fontList is for menu (for Motif GUI)

For example, when you are using Japanese and a 14 dots font,

Vim.font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*

Vim*fontSet: -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*

Vim*fontList: -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-*

or:

Vim*font: k14,r14

Vim*fontSet: k14,r14

Vim*fontList: k14,r14

To have them take effect immediately you will have to do

xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults

Otherwise you will have to stop and restart the X server before the changes

take effect.

The GTK+ version of GUI Vim does not use .Xdefaults, use ~/.gtkrc instead.

The default mostly works OK. But for the menus you might have to change

it. Example:

style "default"

{

fontset="-*-*-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-c-*-*-*"

}

widget_class "*" style "default"

==============================================================================

6. Fonts on MS-Windows mbyte-fonts-MSwinLINK

The simplest is to use the font dialog to select fonts and try them out. You

can find this at the "Edit/Select Font..." menu. Once you find a font name

that works well you can use this command to see its name:

:set guifont

Then add a command to your gvimrc file to set 'guifont':

:set guifont=courier_new:h12

==============================================================================

7. Input on X11 mbyte-XIMLINK

X INPUT METHOD (XIM) BACKGROUND XIM xim x-input-methodLINK

XIM is an international input module for X. There are two kinds of structures,

Xlib unit type and IM-server (Input-Method server) type. IM-server type

is suitable for complex input, such as CJK.

- IM-server

IM-serverLINK

In IM-server type input structures, the input event is handled by either

of the two ways: FrontEnd system and BackEnd system. In the FrontEnd

system, input events are snatched by the IM-server first, then IM-server

give the application the result of input. On the other hand, the BackEnd

system works reverse order. MS Windows adopt BackEnd system. In X, most of

IM-servers adopt FrontEnd system. The demerit of BackEnd system is the

large overhead in communication, but it provides safe synchronization with

no restrictions on applications.

For example, there are xwnmo and kinput2 Japanese IM-server, both are

FrontEnd system. Xwnmo is distributed with Wnn (see below), kinput2 can be

found at: ftp://ftp.sra.co.jp/pub/x11/kinput2/

For Chinese, there's a great XIM server named "xcin", you can input both

Traditional and Simplified Chinese characters. And it can accept other

locale if you make a correct input table. Xcin can be found at:

http://cle.linux.org.tw/xcin/

Others are scim: http://scim.freedesktop.org/ and fcitx:

http://www.fcitx.org/

- Conversion Server

conversion-serverLINK

Some system needs additional server: conversion server. Most of Japanese

IM-servers need it, Kana-Kanji conversion server. For Chinese inputting,

it depends on the method of inputting, in some methods, PinYin or ZhuYin to

HanZi conversion server is needed. For Korean inputting, if you want to

input Hanja, Hangul-Hanja conversion server is needed.

For example, the Japanese inputting process is divided into 2 steps. First

we pre-input Hira-gana, second Kana-Kanji conversion. There are so many

Kanji characters (6349 Kanji characters are defined in JIS X 0208) and the

number of Hira-gana characters are 76. So, first, we pre-input text as

pronounced in Hira-gana, second, we convert Hira-gana to Kanji or Kata-Kana,

if needed. There are some Kana-Kanji conversion server: jserver

(distributed with Wnn, see below) and canna. Canna can be found at:

http://canna.sourceforge.jp/

There is a good input system: Wnn4.2. Wnn 4.2 contains,

xwnmo (IM-server)

jserver (Japanese Kana-Kanji conversion server)

cserver (Chinese PinYin or ZhuYin to simplified HanZi conversion server)

tserver (Chinese PinYin or ZhuYin to traditional HanZi conversion server)

kserver (Hangul-Hanja conversion server)

Wnn 4.2 for several systems can be found at various places on the internet.

Use the RPM or port for your system.

- Input Style

xim-input-styleLINK

When inputting CJK, there are four areas:

1. The area to display of the input while it is being composed

2. The area to display the currently active input mode.

3. The area to display the next candidate for the selection.

4. The area to display other tools.

The third area is needed when converting. For example, in Japanese

inputting, multiple Kanji characters could have the same pronunciation, so

a sequence of Hira-gana characters could map to a distinct sequence of Kanji

characters.

The first and second areas are defined in international input of X with the

names of "Preedit Area", "Status Area" respectively. The third and fourth

areas are not defined and are left to be managed by the IM-server. In the

international input, four input styles have been defined using combinations

of Preedit Area and Status Area: OnTheSpot, OffTheSpot, OverTheSpot

and Root.

Currently, GUI Vim supports three styles, OverTheSpot, OffTheSpot and

Root.

*. on-the-spot OnTheSpotLINK

Preedit Area and Status Area are performed by the client application in

the area of application. The client application is directed by the

IM-server to display all pre-edit data at the location of text

insertion. The client registers callbacks invoked by the input method

during pre-editing.

*. over-the-spot OverTheSpotLINK

Status Area is created in a fixed position within the area of application,

in case of Vim, the position is the additional status line. Preedit Area

is made at present input position of application. The input method

displays pre-edit data in a window which it brings up directly over the

text insertion position.

*. off-the-spot OffTheSpotLINK

Preedit Area and Status Area are performed in the area of application, in

case of Vim, the area is additional status line. The client application

provides display windows for the pre-edit data to the input method which

displays into them directly.

*. root-window RootLINK

Preedit Area and Status Area are outside of the application. The input

method displays all pre-edit data in a separate area of the screen in a

window specific to the input method.

USING XIM multibyte-input E284 E286 E287 E288LINK

E285 E289LINK

Note that Display and Input are independent. It is possible to see your

language even though you have no input method for it. But when your Display

method doesn't match your Input method, the text will be displayed wrong.

Note: You can not use IM unless you specify 'guifontset'.

Therefore, Latin users, you have to also use 'guifontset'

if you use IM.

To input your language you should run the IM-server which supports your

language and conversion-server if needed.

The next 3 lines should be put in your ~/.Xdefaults file. They are common for

all X applications which uses XIM. If you already use XIM, you can skip

this.

*international: True

*.inputMethod: your_input_server_name

*.preeditType: your_input_style

input_server_name is your IM-server name (check your IM-server

manual).

your_input_style is one of OverTheSpot, OffTheSpot, Root. See

also xim-input-style.

*international may not necessary if you use X11R6.

*.inputMethod and *.preeditType are optional if you use X11R6.

For example, when you are using kinput2 as IM-server,

*international: True

*.inputMethod: kinput2

*.preeditType: OverTheSpot

When using OverTheSpot, GUI Vim always connects to the IM Server even in

Normal mode, so you can input your language with commands like "f" and "r".

But when using one of the other two methods, GUI Vim connects to the IM Server

only if it is not in Normal mode.

If your IM Server does not support OverTheSpot, and if you want to use your

language with some Normal mode command like "f" or "r", then you should use a

localized xterm or an xterm which supports XIM

If needed, you can set the XMODIFIERS environment variable:

sh: export XMODIFIERS="@im=input_server_name"

csh: setenv XMODIFIERS "@im=input_server_name"

For example, when you are using kinput2 as IM-server and sh,

export XMODIFIERS="@im=kinput2"

FULLY CONTROLLED XIM

You can fully control XIM, like with IME of MS-Windows (see multibyte-ime).

This is currently only available for the GTK GUI.

Before using fully controlled XIM, one setting is required. Set the

'imactivatekey' option to the key that is used for the activation of the input

method. For example, when you are using kinput2 + canna as IM Server, the

activation key is probably Shift+Space:

:set imactivatekey=S-space

See 'imactivatekey' for the format.

==============================================================================

8. Input on MS-Windows mbyte-IMELINK

(Windows IME support) multibyte-ime IMELINK

{only works Windows GUI and compiled with the +multi_byte_ime feature}

To input multibyte characters on Windows, you can use an Input Method Editor

(IME). In process of your editing text, you must switch status (on/off) of

IME many many many times. Because IME with status on is hooking all of your

key inputs, you cannot input 'j', 'k', or almost all of keys to Vim directly.

This +multi_byte_ime feature help this. It reduce times of switch status of

IME manually. In normal mode, there are almost no need working IME, even

editing multibyte text. So exiting insert mode with ESC, Vim memorize last

status of IME and force turn off IME. When re-enter insert mode, Vim revert

IME status to that memorized automatically.

This works on not only insert-normal mode, but also search-command input and

replace mode.

The options 'iminsert', 'imsearch' and 'imcmdline' can be used to chose

the different input methods or disable them temporarily.

WHAT IS IME

IME is a part of East asian version Windows. That helps you to input

multibyte character. English and other language version Windows does not

have any IME. (Also there is no need usually.) But there is one that

called Microsoft Global IME. Global IME is a part of Internet Explorer

4.0 or above. You can get more information about Global IME, at below

URL.

WHAT IS GLOBAL IME global-imeLINK

Global IME makes capability to input Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text

into Vim buffer on any language version of Windows 98, Windows 95, and

Windows NT 4.0.

On Windows 2000 and XP it should work as well (without downloading). On

Windows 2000 Professional, Global IME is built in, and the Input Locales

can be added through Control Panel/Regional Options/Input Locales.

Please see below URL for detail of Global IME. You can also find various

language version of Global IME at same place.

- Global IME detailed information.

http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?q=global+ime

- Active Input Method Manager (Global IME)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa741221(v=VS.85).aspx

Support for Global IME is an experimental feature.

NOTE: For IME to work you must make sure the input locales of your language

are added to your system. The exact location of this depends on the version

of Windows you use. For example, on my Windows 2000 box:

1. Control Panel

2. Regional Options

3. Input Locales Tab

4. Add Installed input locales -> Chinese(PRC)

The default is still English (United Stated)

Cursor color when IME or XIM is on CursorIMLINK

There is a little cute feature for IME. Cursor can indicate status of IME

by changing its color. Usually status of IME was indicated by little icon

at a corner of desktop (or taskbar). It is not easy to verify status of

IME. But this feature help this.

This works in the same way when using XIM.

You can select cursor color when status is on by using highlight group

CursorIM. For example, add these lines to your gvimrc:

if has('multi_byte_ime')

highlight Cursor guifg=NONE guibg=Green

highlight CursorIM guifg=NONE guibg=Purple

endif

Cursor color with off IME is green. And purple cursor indicates that

status is on.

==============================================================================

9. Input with a keymap mbyte-keymapLINK

When the keyboard doesn't produce the characters you want to enter in your

text, you can use the 'keymap' option. This will translate one or more

(English) characters to another (non-English) character. This only happens

when typing text, not when typing Vim commands. This avoids having to switch

between two keyboard settings.

The value of the 'keymap' option specifies a keymap file to use. The name of

this file is one of these two:

keymap/{keymap}_{encoding}.vim

keymap/{keymap}.vim

Here {keymap} is the value of the 'keymap' option and {encoding} of the

'encoding' option. The file name with the {encoding} included is tried first.

'runtimepath' is used to find these files. To see an overview of all

available keymap files, use this:

:echo globpath(&rtp, "keymap/*.vim")

In Insert and Command-line mode you can use CTRL-^ to toggle between using the

keyboard map or not. i_CTRL-^ c_CTRL-^

This flag is remembered for Insert mode with the 'iminsert' option. When

leaving and entering Insert mode the previous value is used. The same value

is also used for commands that take a single character argument, like f and

r.

For Command-line mode the flag is NOT remembered. You are expected to type an

Ex command first, which is ASCII.

For typing search patterns the 'imsearch' option is used. It can be set to

use the same value as for 'iminsert'.

lCursorLINK

It is possible to give the GUI cursor another color when the language mappings

are being used. This is disabled by default, to avoid that the cursor becomes

invisible when you use a non-standard background color. Here is an example to

use a brightly colored cursor:

:highlight Cursor guifg=NONE guibg=Green

:highlight lCursor guifg=NONE guibg=Cyan

keymap-file-format :loadk :loadkeymap E105 E791LINK

The keymap file looks something like this:

" Maintainer: name <email@address>

" Last Changed: 2001 Jan 1

let b:keymap_name = "short"

loadkeymap

a A

b B comment

The lines starting with a " are comments and will be ignored. Blank lines are

also ignored. The lines with the mappings may have a comment after the useful

text.

The "b:keymap_name" can be set to a short name, which will be shown in the

status line. The idea is that this takes less room than the value of

'keymap', which might be long to distinguish between different languages,

keyboards and encodings.

The actual mappings are in the lines below "loadkeymap". In the example "a"

is mapped to "A" and "b" to "B". Thus the first item is mapped to the second

item. This is done for each line, until the end of the file.

These items are exactly the same as what can be used in a :lnoremap command,

using "<buffer>" to make the mappings local to the buffer.

You can check the result with this command:

:lmap

The two items must be separated by white space. You cannot include white

space inside an item, use the special names "<Tab>" and "<Space>" instead.

The length of the two items together must not exceed 200 bytes.

It's possible to have more than one character in the first column. This works

like a dead key. Example:

'a á

Since Vim doesn't know if the next character after a quote is really an "a",

it will wait for the next character. To be able to insert a single quote,

also add this line:

'' '

Since the mapping is defined with :lnoremap the resulting quote will not be

used for the start of another character.

The "accents" keymap uses this. keymap-accentsLINK

The first column can also be in <> form:

<C-c> Ctrl-C

<A-c> Alt-c

<A-C> Alt-C

Note that the Alt mappings may not work, depending on your keyboard and

terminal.

Although it's possible to have more than one character in the second column,

this is unusual. But you can use various ways to specify the character:

A a literal character

A <char-97> decimal value

A <char-0x61> hexadecimal value

A <char-0141> octal value

x <Space> special key name

The characters are assumed to be encoded for the current value of 'encoding'.

It's possible to use ":scriptencoding" when all characters are given

literally. That doesn't work when using the <char-> construct, because the

conversion is done on the keymap file, not on the resulting character.

The lines after "loadkeymap" are interpreted with 'cpoptions' set to "C".

This means that continuation lines are not used and a backslash has a special

meaning in the mappings. Examples:

" a comment line

\" x maps " to x

\\ y maps \ to y

If you write a keymap file that will be useful for others, consider submitting

it to the Vim maintainer for inclusion in the distribution:

<maintainer@vim.org>

HEBREW KEYMAP keymap-hebrewLINK

This file explains what characters are available in UTF-8 and CP1255 encodings,

and what the keymaps are to get those characters:

glyph encoding keymap

Char utf-8 cp1255 hebrew hebrewp name

א 0x5d0 0xe0 t a 'alef

ב 0x5d1 0xe1 c b bet

ג 0x5d2 0xe2 d g gimel

ד 0x5d3 0xe3 s d dalet

ה 0x5d4 0xe4 v h he

ו 0x5d5 0xe5 u v vav

ז 0x5d6 0xe6 z z zayin

ח 0x5d7 0xe7 j j het

ט 0x5d8 0xe8 y T tet

י 0x5d9 0xe9 h y yod

ך 0x5da 0xea l K kaf sofit

כ 0x5db 0xeb f k kaf

ל 0x5dc 0xec k l lamed

ם 0x5dd 0xed o M mem sofit

מ 0x5de 0xee n m mem

ן 0x5df 0xef i N nun sofit

נ 0x5e0 0xf0 b n nun

ס 0x5e1 0xf1 x s samech

ע 0x5e2 0xf2 g u `ayin

ף 0x5e3 0xf3 ; P pe sofit

פ 0x5e4 0xf4 p p pe

ץ 0x5e5 0xf5 . X tsadi sofit

צ 0x5e6 0xf6 m x tsadi

ק 0x5e7 0xf7 e q qof

ר 0x5e8 0xf8 r r resh

ש 0x5e9 0xf9 a w shin

ת 0x5ea 0xfa , t tav

Vowel marks and special punctuation:

הְ 0x5b0 0xc0 A: A: sheva

הֱ 0x5b1 0xc1 HE HE hataf segol

הֲ 0x5b2 0xc2 HA HA hataf patah

הֳ 0x5b3 0xc3 HO HO hataf qamats

הִ 0x5b4 0xc4 I I hiriq

הֵ 0x5b5 0xc5 AY AY tsere

הֶ 0x5b6 0xc6 E E segol

הַ 0x5b7 0xc7 AA AA patah

הָ 0x5b8 0xc8 AO AO qamats

הֹ 0x5b9 0xc9 O O holam

הֻ 0x5bb 0xcb U U qubuts

כּ 0x5bc 0xcc D D dagesh

הֽ 0x5bd 0xcd ]T ]T meteg

ה־ 0x5be 0xce ]Q ]Q maqaf

בֿ 0x5bf 0xcf ]R ]R rafe

ב׀ 0x5c0 0xd0 ]p ]p paseq

שׁ 0x5c1 0xd1 SR SR shin-dot

שׂ 0x5c2 0xd2 SL SL sin-dot

׃ 0x5c3 0xd3 ]P ]P sof-pasuq

װ 0x5f0 0xd4 VV VV double-vav

ױ 0x5f1 0xd5 VY VY vav-yod

ײ 0x5f2 0xd6 YY YY yod-yod

The following are only available in utf-8

Cantillation marks:

glyph

Char utf-8 hebrew name

ב֑ 0x591 C: etnahta

ב֒ 0x592 Cs segol

ב֓ 0x593 CS shalshelet

ב֔ 0x594 Cz zaqef qatan

ב֕ 0x595 CZ zaqef gadol

ב֖ 0x596 Ct tipeha

ב֗ 0x597 Cr revia

ב֘ 0x598 Cq zarqa

ב֙ 0x599 Cp pashta

ב֚ 0x59a C! yetiv

ב֛ 0x59b Cv tevir

ב֜ 0x59c Cg geresh

ב֝ 0x59d C* geresh qadim

ב֞ 0x59e CG gershayim

ב֟ 0x59f CP qarnei-parah

ב֪ 0x5aa Cy yerach-ben-yomo

ב֫ 0x5ab Co ole

ב֬ 0x5ac Ci iluy

ב֭ 0x5ad Cd dehi

ב֮ 0x5ae Cn zinor

ב֯ 0x5af CC masora circle

Combining forms:

ﬠ 0xfb20 X` Alternative `ayin

ﬡ 0xfb21 X' Alternative 'alef

ﬢ 0xfb22 X-d Alternative dalet

ﬣ 0xfb23 X-h Alternative he

ﬤ 0xfb24 X-k Alternative kaf

ﬥ 0xfb25 X-l Alternative lamed

ﬦ 0xfb26 X-m Alternative mem-sofit

ﬧ 0xfb27 X-r Alternative resh

ﬨ 0xfb28 X-t Alternative tav

﬩ 0xfb29 X-+ Alternative plus

שׁ 0xfb2a XW shin+shin-dot

שׂ 0xfb2b Xw shin+sin-dot

שּׁ 0xfb2c X..W shin+shin-dot+dagesh

שּׂ 0xfb2d X..w shin+sin-dot+dagesh

אַ 0xfb2e XA alef+patah

אָ 0xfb2f XO alef+qamats

אּ 0xfb30 XI alef+hiriq (mapiq)

בּ 0xfb31 X.b bet+dagesh

גּ 0xfb32 X.g gimel+dagesh

דּ 0xfb33 X.d dalet+dagesh

הּ 0xfb34 X.h he+dagesh

וּ 0xfb35 Xu vav+dagesh

זּ 0xfb36 X.z zayin+dagesh

טּ 0xfb38 X.T tet+dagesh

יּ 0xfb39 X.y yud+dagesh

ךּ 0xfb3a X.K kaf sofit+dagesh

כּ 0xfb3b X.k kaf+dagesh

לּ 0xfb3c X.l lamed+dagesh

מּ 0xfb3e X.m mem+dagesh

נּ 0xfb40 X.n nun+dagesh

סּ 0xfb41 X.s samech+dagesh

ףּ 0xfb43 X.P pe sofit+dagesh

פּ 0xfb44 X.p pe+dagesh

צּ 0xfb46 X.x tsadi+dagesh

קּ 0xfb47 X.q qof+dagesh

רּ 0xfb48 X.r resh+dagesh

שּ 0xfb49 X.w shin+dagesh

תּ 0xfb4a X.t tav+dagesh

וֹ 0xfb4b Xo vav+holam

בֿ 0xfb4c XRb bet+rafe

כֿ 0xfb4d XRk kaf+rafe

פֿ 0xfb4e XRp pe+rafe

ﭏ 0xfb4f Xal alef-lamed

==============================================================================

10. Using UTF-8 mbyte-utf8 UTF-8 utf-8 utf8LINK

Unicode unicodeLINK

The Unicode character set was designed to include all characters from other

character sets. Therefore it is possible to write text in any language using

Unicode (with a few rarely used languages excluded). And it's mostly possible

to mix these languages in one file, which is impossible with other encodings.

Unicode can be encoded in several ways. The most popular one is UTF-8, which

uses one or more bytes for each character and is backwards compatible with

ASCII. On MS-Windows UTF-16 is also used (previously UCS-2), which uses

16-bit words. Vim can support all of these encodings, but always uses UTF-8

internally.

Vim has comprehensive UTF-8 support. It works well in:

- xterm with utf-8 support enabled

- Athena, Motif and GTK GUI

- MS-Windows GUI

- several other platforms

Double-width characters are supported. This works best with 'guifontwide' or

'guifontset'. When using only 'guifont' the wide characters are drawn in the

normal width and a space to fill the gap. Note that the 'guifontset' option

is no longer relevant in the GTK+ 2 GUI.

bom-bytesLINK

When reading a file a BOM (Byte Order Mark) can be used to recognize the

Unicode encoding:

EF BB BF utf-8

FE FF utf-16 big endian

FF FE utf-16 little endian

00 00 FE FF utf-32 big endian

FF FE 00 00 utf-32 little endian

Utf-8 is the recommended encoding. Note that it's difficult to tell utf-16

and utf-32 apart. Utf-16 is often used on MS-Windows, utf-32 is not

widespread as file format.

mbyte-combining mbyte-composingLINK

A composing or combining character is used to change the meaning of the

character before it. The combining characters are drawn on top of the

preceding character.

Up to two combining characters can be used by default. This can be changed

with the 'maxcombine' option.

When editing text a composing character is mostly considered part of the

preceding character. For example "x" will delete a character and its

following composing characters by default.

If the 'delcombine' option is on, then pressing 'x' will delete the combining

characters, one at a time, then the base character. But when inserting, you

type the first character and the following composing characters separately,

after which they will be joined. The "r" command will not allow you to type a

combining character, because it doesn't know one is coming. Use "R" instead.

Bytes which are not part of a valid UTF-8 byte sequence are handled like a

single character and displayed as <xx>, where "xx" is the hex value of the

byte.

Overlong sequences are not handled specially and displayed like a valid

character. However, search patterns may not match on an overlong sequence.

(an overlong sequence is where more bytes are used than required for the

character.) An exception is NUL (zero) which is displayed as "<00>".

In the file and buffer the full range of Unicode characters can be used (31

bits). However, displaying only works for the characters present in the

selected font.

Useful commands:

- "ga" shows the decimal, hexadecimal and octal value of the character under

the cursor. If there are composing characters these are shown too. (If the

message is truncated, use ":messages").

- "g8" shows the bytes used in a UTF-8 character, also the composing

characters, as hex numbers.

- ":set encoding=utf-8 fileencodings=" forces using UTF-8 for all files. The

default is to use the current locale for 'encoding' and set 'fileencodings'

to automatically detect the encoding of a file.

STARTING VIM

If your current locale is in an utf-8 encoding, Vim will automatically start

in utf-8 mode.

If you are using another locale:

set encoding=utf-8

You might also want to select the font used for the menus. Unfortunately this

doesn't always work. See the system specific remarks below, and 'langmenu'.

USING UTF-8 IN X-Windows utf-8-in-xwindowsLINK

Note: This section does not apply to the GTK+ 2 GUI.

You need to specify a font to be used. For double-wide characters another

font is required, which is exactly twice as wide. There are three ways to do

this:

1. Set 'guifont' and let Vim find a matching 'guifontwide'

2. Set 'guifont' and 'guifontwide'

3. Set 'guifontset'

See the documentation for each option for details. Example:

:set guifont=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso10646-1

You might also want to set the font used for the menus. This only works for

Motif. Use the ":hi Menu font={fontname}" command for this. :highlight

TYPING UTF-8 utf-8-typingLINK

If you are using X-Windows, you should find an input method that supports

utf-8.

If your system does not provide support for typing utf-8, you can use the

'keymap' feature. This allows writing a keymap file, which defines a utf-8

character as a sequence of ASCII characters. See mbyte-keymap.

Another method is to set the current locale to the language you want to use

and for which you have a XIM available. Then set 'termencoding' to that

language and Vim will convert the typed characters to 'encoding' for you.

If everything else fails, you can type any character as four hex bytes:

CTRL-V u 1234

"1234" is interpreted as a hex number. You must type four characters, prepend

a zero if necessary.

COMMAND ARGUMENTS utf-8-char-argLINK

Commands like f, F, t and r take an argument of one character. For

UTF-8 this argument may include one or two composing characters. These need

to be produced together with the base character, Vim doesn't wait for the next

character to be typed to find out if it is a composing character or not.

Using 'keymap' or :lmap is a nice way to type these characters.

The commands that search for a character in a line handle composing characters

as follows. When searching for a character without a composing character,

this will find matches in the text with or without composing characters. When

searching for a character with a composing character, this will only find

matches with that composing character. It was implemented this way, because

not everybody is able to type a composing character.

==============================================================================

11. Overview of options mbyte-optionsLINK

These options are relevant for editing multi-byte files. Check the help in

options.txt for detailed information.

'encoding' Encoding used for the keyboard and display. It is also the

default encoding for files.

'fileencoding' Encoding of a file. When it's different from 'encoding'

conversion is done when reading or writing the file.

'fileencodings' List of possible encodings of a file. When opening a file

these will be tried and the first one that doesn't cause an

error is used for 'fileencoding'.

'charconvert' Expression used to convert files from one encoding to another.

'formatoptions' The 'm' flag can be included to have formatting break a line

at a multibyte character of 256 or higher. Thus is useful for

languages where a sequence of characters can be broken

anywhere.

'guifontset' The list of font names used for a multi-byte encoding. When

this option is not empty, it replaces 'guifont'.

'keymap' Specify the name of a keyboard mapping.

==============================================================================

Contributions specifically for the multi-byte features by:

Chi-Deok Hwang <hwang@mizi.co.kr>

SungHyun Nam <goweol@gmail.com>

K.Nagano <nagano@atese.advantest.co.jp>

Taro Muraoka <koron@tka.att.ne.jp>

Yasuhiro Matsumoto <mattn@mail.goo.ne.jp>

vim:tw=78:ts=8:ft=help:norl: