Codesets for UW ttyp0 Linux Console Fonts

Introduction

The Linux console distinguishes between encodings and codesets. The encoding determines the meaning of bytes or byte sequences by mapping positions to abstract characters. If the encoding is not Unicode, it is typically one of the standard 8-bit encodings such as ISO-8859-1 (which is then internally translated to Unicode). On the other hand, the codeset determines which characters are supported by a font. This set of characters need not be in one-to-one correspondence to the set of characters supported by the chosen encoding: If the encoding is Unicode, the codeset will contain only a subset of all Unicode characters; if the encoding is an 8-bit encoding such as ISO-8859-1, the codeset may contain additional characters that are not included in the encoding.

The Linux console supports fonts with upto 512 glyphs. However, the full set of console colors (eight regular and eight bright colors) is only available if the number of glyphs in the current font does not exceed 256. If a font that contains more than 256 glyphs is used, the eight bright colors are lost.

UW ttyp0 can be installed on the Linux console with various 256-glyph and 512-glyph codesets. In order to cover as many languages as possible with a limited number of glyphs, these codesets represent characters with the same or a very similar appearance by the same glyph. That means, for instance, that the Greek Η (Eta), the Cyrillic Н (En) and the Latin H share the same glyph, but also, that the empty set character ∅ may look like the Danish Ø (O with stroke), or that the Yen character ¥ (Y with double horizontal stroke) may look like the Kazakh Cyrillic character Ұ (Y with single horizontal stroke) in some fonts.

The Linux console does not support the composition of glyphs from combining characters. For European languages, this is unproblematic. Many languages, however, use characters that can only be represented in Unicode as a combination of a base character and one or more combining characters. For example the Navajo letter “ą́” consists of “ą” (small “a” with ogonek) plus a combining acute accent “◌́” and the Yoruba letter “ẹ̀” consists of “ẹ” (small “e” with dot below) plus a combining grave accent “◌̀”. Similarly, the name of the Thai district “ลี้” (“Li”) consists of the consonant letter “ล”, the combining vowel sign “◌ี”, and the combining tone mark “◌้” stacked above each other. The codesets below contain the combining characters necessary for these languages, but without support from the console driver, they will be displayed wrongly: after the base letter instead of above/below the base letter. Moreover, text editors will then make incorrect assumptions about the cursor position, leading to further display problems. For Hebrew vowel marks, the situation is even worse, because the right-to-left writing direction exacerbates the problem. (Actually, the Linux console font format PSF makes it possible to declare that some glyph corresponds to a sequence of a base letter and a combining accent, so a limited support for combining accents should be possible. Regrettably, the Linux console driver seems to ignore these declarations.)

TL;DR: The description of the available codesets below is quite lengthy. If you need a codeset that supports a particular list of properties, character sets, languages, or characters, try the Interactive Codeset Selector.

Contents

• 256-glyph codesets
  • ISO-8859-like codesets
    • Europe, North/Central Asia:
      WET, WCE, CEu, Bal, Sam, NWE, SEu, GkC, GkW, EEC, EEW, EEA
    • Near East, Caucasus:
      HbR, HbW, Arm, Geo
    • Africa:
      AfP, AfS, AfU
    • The Americas:
      MSA
    • Southeast Asia and East Asia, Australia, Oceania:
      Tha, Vie, SAO
  • PC-like codesets:
    437, 775, 850, 852, 857, 860, 861, 862, 863, 865, DGk, DCW, DCE, maz, kam, cwi, Koi, MIK
  • Braille codeset:
    Brl
• 512-glyph codesets
  • Standard codesets
    • Europe, North/Central Asia:
      WEur, CEur, NEur, EECA
    • Near East, Caucasus:
      Hebr, Armn, Geor, AAEGGH
    • Africa:
      NAfr, AfrP, AfrU
    • The Americas:
      NAme, BCWa, MSAm
    • Southeast and East Asia, Australia, Oceania:
      Thai, Viet, SEAO
    • Esperanto, historic languages, old orthographies:
      Espr, NWEu, OldCyr, PolyGk
  • Combined Braille codesets
• Compatibility codeset names for console-setup:
  Armenian, CyrAsia, CyrKoi, CyrSlav, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Lat15, Lat2, Lat38, Lat7, Thai, Uni1, Uni2, Uni3, Vietnamese
• Machine-readable codeset descriptions

256-glyph codesets

ISO-8859-like codesets

The following 256-glyph codesets extend one or more ISO-8859 (or similar) encodings. They also support basic (single-line) line graphics.

Europe, North/Central Asia

WET: LC 256 Western European and Turkish.

The WET codeset covers ISO-8859-1/CP1252, ISO-8859-15 (W Eur Latin), and ISO-8859-9/CP1254 (Turkish). It also supports Slovene:

WCE: LC 256 Western and Central European.

The WCE codeset covers ISO-8859-2 (E Eur Latin) except spacing accents, ISO-8859-15 (W Eur Latin), and ISO-8859-16 (SE Eur Latin):

CEu: LC 256 Central European.

The CEu codeset covers ISO-8859-2/CP1250 (E Eur Latin). It also supports Spanish (except ¡, ¿, ª, º) and Swedish:

Bal: LC 256 Baltic.

The Bal codeset covers ISO-8859-13/CP1257 (Baltic, Scandinavian, Polish). It also supports French:

Sam: LC 256 Sami.

The Sam codeset covers ISO-8859-1/CP1252, ISO-8859-15 (W Eur Latin), and CP1270 (Sami).

NWE: LC 256 North-Western European.

The NWE codeset covers ISO-8859-14 (Celtic):

SEu: LC 256 Southern European/Esperanto.

The SEu codeset covers ISO-8859-3 (Esperanto, German, Italian, Maltese, Spanish, Turkish). It also supports Croatian, Dutch, French, and Swedish:

GkC: LC 256 Greek C.

The GkC codeset covers ISO-8859-7/CP1253 (Greek). It also supports Albanian, Croatian, Romanian, and Turkish:

GkW: LC 256 Greek W.

The GkW codeset covers ISO-8859-7 (Greek). It also supports Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish:

EEC: LC 256 Eastern European C.

The EEC codeset covers ISO-8859-5/CP1251 (E Eur Cyrillic). It also supports Croatian and Montenegrin:

EEW: LC 256 Eastern European W.

The EEW codeset covers ISO-8859-5 (E Eur Cyrillic). It also supports Estonian, French, German, Italian, and Swedish:

EEA: LC 256 Eastern European and Asian.

The EEA codeset covers PARATYPE-PT154 (Asian Cyrillic). It also supports Evenki, Komi, Nenets, Ossetian, and Ukrainian:

Near East, Caucasus

HbR: LC 256 Hebrew R.

The HbR codeset covers ISO-8859-8 (Hebrew). It also supports Russian and Ukranian:

HbW: LC 256 Hebrew W.

The HbW codeset covers ISO-8859-8 (Hebrew). It also supports Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish (except ª, º), Swedish, and Turkish:

Arm: LC 256 Armenian.

The Arm codeset covers ARMSCII-8. It also supports French:

Geo: LC 256 Georgian.

The Geo codeset covers Georgian-PS/Georgian-Academy (except some Latin letters). It also supports Azeri, French, German, and Turkish:

Africa

AfP: LC 256 African P.

The AfP codeset supports Bambara, Fulfulde, Hausa, Kanuri, Kikuyu, Lingala, Luganda, Moore, Twi, Wolof, and many other indigenous languages from West, Central, and East Africa (except Southern Nigeria), as well as French, Portuguese, and Spanish:

Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

AfS: LC 256 African S.

The AfP codeset supports most indigenous Southern African languages, such as Chewa/Nyanja, Herero, Malagasy, Nama/Damara, Pedi, Tswa, and Venda, as well as Afrikaans, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish:

Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

AfU: LC 256 African U.

The AfU codeset supports Ibibio, Igbo, Izon, Kirike, Yoruba and other indigenous African languages primarily from Southern Nigeria, as well as French, Portuguese, and Spanish:

Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

The Americas

MSA: LC 256 Mesoamerican and South American.

The MSA codeset supports many indigenous languages of Mexico and Central and South America, as well as Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish:

Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

Southeast and East Asia

Tha: LC 256 Thai.

The Tha codeset covers TIS 620-0/ISO-8859-11. It also supports Dutch, German, Irish, and Spanish (except ¡, ¿, ª, º):

Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

Vie: LC 256 Vietnamese.

The Vie codeset covers TCVN-5712/VISCII-1.1:

SAO: LC 256 Southeast and East Asian, Australian, Oceanian.

The SAO codeset supports many languages of Southeast and East Asia, Australia, and Oceania, as well as Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish:

Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

PC-like codesets

The following 256-glyph codesets are more or less based on the traditional IBM PC code pages. Empty slots in the original code pages are filled with currency signs (€, ₺, ₪) and mathematical symbols (≤, ≥, ≠).

437: Original IBM PC codeset CP437.

775: IBM PC CP775 (DOSBaltRim).

850: IBM PC CP850 (DOSLatin1).

Note that CP850 is supposed to support French, but does not contain Œ, œ, and Ÿ.

852: IBM PC CP852 (DOSLatin2).

857: IBM PC CP857 (DOSTurkish).

860: IBM PC CP860 (DOSPortuguese).

861: IBM PC CP861 (DOSIcelandic).

862: IBM PC CP862 (DOSHebrew).

863: IBM PC CP863 (DOSCanadaF).

Note that CP863 is supposed to support French, but does not contain Œ, œ, Ÿ, and ÿ.

865: IBM PC CP865 (DOSNordic).

DGk: IBM PC CP737/CP869 (Greek).

DCW: IBM PC CP855/CP872 and ISO-8859-5 (European Cyrillic).

DCE: IBM PC CP808/CP848/CP849/CP866/CP1125/CP1131 (Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian).

maz: Mazovia codeset (Polish).

kam: Kamenicky codeset (Czech, Slovak).

cwi: CWI-2 codeset (Hungarian).

Koi: KOI8 codeset (Belarusian, Russian, Ukranian, some Asian Cyrillic).

MIK: MIK codeset (Bulgarian).

Braille codeset

Braille is a tactile writing system for people who are blind or have low vision. The Brl codeset contains the 256 Braille symbols in Unicode.

Brl: Braille codeset.

512-glyph codesets

The 512-glyph codesets for UW ttyp0 on the Linux console fall into two categories: standard codesets and combined Braille codesets.

Standard codesets

The UW ttyp0 distribution provides 21 standard 512-glyph codesets. All of them contain the following (or similar) glyphs:

That means that they all cover ASCII, some accented letters, basic typographic and mathematical characters (including non-accented Greek), and line graphics (single-line and double-line, but not mixed).

Most of the standard codesets (except AAEGGH, OldCyr, and PolyGk) come in four variants, denoted by the suffixes _L, _M, _C, and _P. The _L codesets support additional scripts and languages and are explained below. The _M codesets support additional mathematical and technical characters:

The _C codesets support the full set of IBM CP 437 graphics:

The _P codesets support Powerline characters and some more graphics characters that are useful for prompts or status lines:

Note that the last 18 characters in the _P sample are located in the Unicode Private Use Area, which means that they may not be supported by other fonts – the last 11 characters are available in Font Awesome and in patched “Nerd Fonts”, the remaining 7 are available in “Nerd Fonts” and in Powerline-compatible fonts. (The last 11 characters would also be available in Unicode Plane 1 (that is, characters between U+10000 and U+1FFFF); unfortunately, the Linux console supports only Plane 0, that is, characters between U+0000 and U+FFFF.)

Europe, North/Central Asia:

WEur_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Western European.

The WEur codesets support almost all Latin-script languages of Europe and Western Asia (except Azeri, Laz, Livonian, Finnish Romani, and Skolt Sami) as well as monotonic Greek:

WEur_L supports also Finnish Romani, Skolt Sami and all Slavic Cyrillic-script languages:

WEur_{M,C,P,L} covers ISO-8859-1/2/7/9/13/15/16 and CP1250/1252/1253/1254/1257; WEur_L covers also ISO-8859-5 and CP1251/1270. For accented Danish, dotted Irish, Old English, and Old Norse see NWEu; for Livonian see NEur; for Azeri see CEur_L, EECA, Armn, and Geor; for Laz see Geor; for polytonic Greek see PolyGk; for Finnish Romani and Skolt Sami see also NEur; for Cyrillic see also CEur, NEur, and EECA.

CEur_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Central European.

The CEur codesets support most Latin-script languages of Europe and Western Asia (except Asturian, Azeri, Faroese, Icelandic, Latvian, Laz, Livonian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Finnish Romani, Macedonian Romani, Sami, Welsh), monotonic Greek, and all Slavic Cyrillic-script languages:

CEur_L supports almost all Latin-script languages of Europe, Western Asia, and Central Asia (except Asturian, Laz, Livonian, Finnish Romani, and Skolt Sami), monotonic Greek, all Slavic Cyrillic-script languages, Gagauz (Cyr), Moldovan (Cyr), and some Cyrillic-script languages of Central Asia, e.g., Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tatar, and Turkmen:

CEur_{M,C,P,L} covers ISO-8859-2/5/9/16 and CP1250/1251/1253/1254; CEur_L covers also ISO-8859-1/7/13/15 and CP1252/1257; CEur_C covers also KOI8 (Rus/Ukr). For Asturian see WEur and NWEu_L; for Sami, Livonian, and Finnish Romani see NEur; for Laz see Geor; for polytonic Greek see PolyGk; for Old Cyrillic see OldCyr; for Esperanto and further non-European currency symbols see Espr. For Icelandic, Maltese, Welsh, the Dutch “IJ/ij” ligature, the Catalan “Ŀ/ŀ”, the German capital “ẞ”, and the Irish “⁊” sign see also WEur and NWEu; for Azeri see also EECA, Armn, and Geor; for Faroese, Latvian, and Lithuanian see also WEur, NWEu, and NEur; for Macedonian Romani see also Espr and EECA_L; for Gagauz (Cyr) and Moldovan (Cyr) see also EECA.

NEur_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Northern European.

The NEur codesets support in particular Latin-script and Cyrillic-script languages spoken north of the line Paris–Berlin–Warsaw–Kyiv–Moscow, including Livonian, Finnish Romani, Skolt Sami, Kildin Sami, Nenets, and Komi, plus Croatian, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish (except ª, º):

NEur_L supports also almost all Latin-script languages of Europe and Western Asia (except Asturian, Laz, Maltese, and Welsh), all Slavic Cyrillic-script languages, and some Cyrillic-script languages of Central Asia, e.g., Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Mari, Mongolian, Selkup, Tatar, Turkmen, and Uzbek:

NEur_{M,C,P,L} covers ISO-8859-13 and CP1257; NEur_L covers also ISO-8859-1/2/5/9/15/16 and CP1250/1251/1252/1254/1270; NEur_C covers also KOI8 (Rus/Ukr). For accented Danish, dotted Irish, Old English, and Old Norse see NWEu; for Maltese, Welsh, the Dutch “IJ/ij” ligature, the Catalan “Ŀ/ŀ”, the German capital “ẞ”, and the Irish “⁊” sign see WEur and NWEu.

EECA_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Eastern European and North/Central Asian.

The EECA codesets support almost all Latin-script and Cyrillic-script languages spoken in Europe and North/Central Asia east of the line Murmansk–St. Petersburg–Minsk–Bucharest–Sofia–Ankara (except Kildin Sami, Abkhaz, Enets, Laz (Lat), and Orok), plus Danish, Dutch, German, Spanish (except ª, º), and Swedish:

EECA_L supports also Enets, Orok, all Cyrillic-script languages of Europe except Kildin Sami and most Latin-script languages of Europe (except Asturian, Latvian, Livonian, Maltese, Finnish Romani, Sami, and Welsh):

EECA_{M,C,P,L} covers PARATYPE-PT154; EECA_L covers also ISO-8859-1/2/5/9/15/16 and CP1250/1251/1252/1254; EECA_C covers also KOI8 (Rus/Ukr). For Latvian, Livonian, Lithuanian, and Sami see NEur; for Abkhaz and Laz see Geor.

Near East, Caucasus:

Hebr_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Hebrew.

The Hebr codesets support (unpointed) Hebrew, Yiddish, most Latin-script languages of Europe and Western Asia (except Asturian, Azeri, Faroese, Icelandic, Latvian, Livonian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Finnish Romani, Macedonian Romani, Sami, Welsh), as well as Bulgarian and Russian:

Hebr_L supports also Hebrew vowel marks, Azeri (Lat), Faroese, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, and all Slavic Cyrillic-script languages:

Hebr_{M,C,P,L} covers ISO-8859-2/8/9/16 and CP1250/1254; Hebr_L covers also ISO-8859-1/5/13/15 and CP1251/1252/1255/1257; Hebr_C covers also KOI8 (Rus). For romanized Arabic, monotonic Greek, Armenian, Georgian, and Esperanto see AAEGGH. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

Armn_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Armenian.

The Armn codesets support Armenian, Azeri (Lat), Belarusian, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Ossetian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian:

Armn_L supports also Georgian, Laz (Geo), Mingrelian, Svan, monotonic Greek, Croatian, Hungarian, and Moldovan (Cyr):

Armn_{M,C,P,L} covers ARMSCII-8, ISO-8859-9, and CP1254; Armn_L covers also CP1253 and GEORGIAN-ACADEMY/-PS; Armn_C covers also KOI8 (Rus/Ukr). For Abkhaz, Kazakh (Lat/Cyr), Laz (Lat), Turkmen (Lat/Cyr), and Uzbek (Lat/Cyr) see Geor_L; for Azeri (Cyr) see EECA; for romanized Arabic, Hebrew, and Esperanto see AAEGGH.

Geor_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Georgian.

The Geor codesets support Georgian, Laz (Geo/Lat), Mingrelian, Svan, Abkhaz, Azeri (Lat), Belarusian, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Kazakh (Lat/Cyr), Mongolian, Ossetian, Russian, Spanish (except ¡, ¿, ª, º), Swedish, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen (Lat/Cyr), Ukrainian, and Uzbek (Lat/Cyr):

Geor_L supports also Armenian:

Geor_{M,C,P,L} covers GEORGIAN-ACADEMY/-PS; Geor_L covers also ARMSCII-8; Geor_C covers also KOI8 (Rus/Ukr). For more European Latin-script languages and monotonic Greek see Armn_L; for Azeri (Cyr) see EECA; for romanized Arabic, Hebrew, and Esperanto see AAEGGH.

AAEGGH: LC 512 Arabic, Armenian, Esperanto, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew.

The AAEGGH codeset supports (unpointed) Hebrew, Yiddish, romanized Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Laz (Geo), monotonic Greek, Esperanto, and some Latin-script languages of Europe, e.g., Danish, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, and Swedish:

AAEGGH covers ISO-8859-7/8, CP1253, ARMSCII-8, and GEORGIAN-ACADEMY/-PS. For a larger choice of Arabic romanization schemes see NAfr; for Hebrew and Yiddish see also Hebr; for Armenian and Georgian see also Armn and Geor. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

Africa:

NAfr_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 North African.

The NAfr codesets support Northern and Southern Berber languages (Lat/Tfn), romanized Arabic and Hassaniya Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish:

NAfr_L supports further African languages, e.g., Bambara, Dazaga, Dinka, Fulfulde, Ga, Hausa, Kanuri, Luganda, Moore, Nuer, Serer, Tedaga, Twi, Wolof, and Yoruba, romanized Ancient Egyptian, and further European languages, e.g., Danish, Italian, Maltese, Portuguese, and Turkish:

NAfr_L covers ISO-8859-9 and CP1254. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

AfrP_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 African P (“Phonetic”).

The AfrP_{M,C,P} codesets support almost all Latin-script languages spoken in Southern Africa and most Latin-script languages spoken in West Africa except Nigeria and Niger, Central Africa, and East Africa. They also support European languages, e.g., Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish, as well as romanized Japanese (Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki):

AfrP_L supports further African languages as well as Chinese (Pinyin), Esperanto, and Slovene:

For African languages that use letters with underdot (ạḅḍẹḥịṇọṣụẓ), underscore (ḇḏẖḵṯ), or undertilde (ḛḭṵ), certain consonant letters with caron (čňřž), acute (ŕś), cedilla (şţ), stroke (đɍŧ), or hook (ɦɽ), or vowel letters with macron plus grave or acute (ḕḗṑṓ) see also AfrU. For Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, and Turkish see AfrU_L. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

AfrU_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 African U (“Underdot”).

The AfrU codesets support almost all Latin-script languages spoken in Nigeria and Niger, most Latin-script languages spoken in West, Central, and East Africa, and some Latin-script languages spoken in Southern Africa. They also support some European languages, e.g., Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish, as well as romanized Japanese (Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki):

AfrU_L supports further African languages as well as Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, Romanian, and Slovak:

AfrU_L covers ISO-8859-1/2/9/15/16 and CP1250/1252/1254. For African languages that use consonant letters with circumflex (ĉĥŵŷẑ), diaeresis (ẅ), or low circumflex (ḓḽṋṱ), “y” with grave or tilde (ỳỹ), “e” with cedilla (ȩ), “o” with stroke and acute (ǿ), or certain rare phonetic letters (ɑꞵƈɤƒɠɥɪɉʝɯɵƥᵽʃƭʉʊⱳꞷʒʔǀǁǂʘ) see also AfrP. For Chinese (Pinyin), Esperanto, and African languages that use vowel letters with dots (ȧėȯ) see AfrP_L. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

The Americas:

NAme_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 North American.

The NAme codesets support most indigenous Latin-script languages of Canada and the USA (excluding British Columbia and Washington). They also support some languages of Mesoamerica and South America and some European languages, e.g., Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish:

NAme_L supports also some languages of British Columbia and Washington, and some more European languages, e.g., Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Romanian, and Slovak:

NAme_{M,C,P,L} covers ISO-8859-1/15 and CP1252; NAme_L covers also ISO-8859-2/16 and CP1250. For Esperanto, Latvian, Maltese, and Turkish see BCWa_L. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

BCWa_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 British Columbia and Washington.

The BCWa codesets support most indigenous Latin-script languages of British Columbia and Washington, that is, in particular, Haida, Ktunaxa, and Sahaptian, Salishan, Tsimshian, and Wakashan languages. They also support some other languages of the Americas and some European languages, e.g., Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish:

BCWa_L supports some more languages of Canada and the USA and some more European languages, e.g., Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, and Esperanto:

BCWa_L covers ISO-8859-3/9/13/16 and CP1254/1257. For Czech, Icelandic, and Slovak see NAme_L. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

MSAm_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Mesoamerican and South American.

The MSAm codesets support most indigenous languages of Mexico and Central and South America. They also support some languages of the Southern USA and some European languages, e.g., Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Portuguese, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish:

MSAm_L supports some more languages of the Southern USA, as well as Czech, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Turkish, and Welsh:

MSAm_{M,C,P,L} covers ISO-8859-1/15 and CP1252; MSAm_L covers also ISO-8859-2/9/13/16 and CP1250/1254/1257. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

Southeast and East Asia, Australia, Oceania:

Thai_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Thai.

The Thai codesets support Thai, Mandarin Chinese (Pinyin romanization), Japanese (Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki romanization), Sanskrit (IAST romanization), and some European languages, e.g., Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish.

Thai_L supports some more languages, e.g., Bulgarian, Croatian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian:

Thai_{M,C,P,L} covers TIS 620-0 and ISO-8859-11; Thai_L covers also ISO-8859-9 and CP1254. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

Viet_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Vietnamese.

The Viet codesets support Vietnamese and some European languages, e.g., Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish:

Viet_L supports also some minority languages of Vietnam, e.g., Rade and Jarai, and some more European languages, e.g., Belarusian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian:

Viet_{M,C,P,L} covers TCVN-5712 and VISCII-1.1; Viet_L covers also ISO-8859-9/16 and CP1254.

SEAO_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Southeast and East Asian, Australian, Oceanian.

The SEAO codesets support Latin-script languages spoken in Southeast Asia (in particular Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines), Australia, and Oceania (except Dadibi and Worrorra), romanized Chinese languages such as Mandarin (Pinyin), Fuzhou (Bàng-uâ-cê), Haikou Hainanese (Bǽh-oe-tu), Hakka (Pha̍k-fa-sṳ), and Hokkien (Pe̍h-ōe-jī and Tâi-lô), romanized Japanese (Hepburn and Kunrei-shiki), and some European languages, e.g., Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish:

SEAO_L also supports Dadibi and Worrorra, as well as Croatian, Czech, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, and Turkish:

SEAO_L covers ISO-8859-1/2/9/15/16 and CP1250/1252/1254. For Dadibi see also NWEu and BCWa. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

Esperanto, historic languages, old orthographies:

Espr_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 Esperanto.

The Espr_{M,C,P} codesets are similar to CEur_{M,C,P}, replacing monotonic Greek by Esperanto, Macedonian Romani, and non-European currency symbols:

Espr_L supports Esperanto, almost all Latin-script languages of Europe, Western Asia, and Central Asia (except Asturian, Laz, Livonian, Maltese, Finnish Romani, Sami, and Welsh), monotonic Greek, all Slavic Cyrillic-script languages, Gagauz (Cyr), Moldovan (Cyr), and some Cyrillic-script languages of Central Asia, e.g., Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tatar, and Turkmen:

Espr_{M,C,P,L} covers ISO-8859-2/5/9/16 and CP1250/1251/1254; Espr_L covers also ISO-8859-1/13/15 and CP1252/1253/1257; Espr_C covers also KOI8 (Rus/Ukr). For Asturian, Maltese, Sami, and Welsh see NWEu_L; for Armenian, Georgian, Hebrew, and romanized Arabic see AAEGGH, for romanized Chinese (Pinyin) and indigenous languages of Africa see AfrU_L, for indigenous languages of North America see BCWa_L.

NWEu_{M,C,P,L}: LC 512 North-Western European.

The NWEu codesets support almost all Latin-script languages of Europe and Western Asia (except Asturian, Azeri, Laz, Livonian, Finnish Romani, Macedonian Romani, and Skolt Sami), including accented Danish, Irish (dotted orthography), Old English, and Old Norse:

NWEu_L also supports Asturian, Azeri (Lat), Esperanto, Skolt Sami, Bulgarian, Russian, and Ukrainian:

NWEu_{M,C,P,L} covers ISO-8859-1/2/9/13/14/15/16 and CP1250/1252/1254/1257; NWEu_L covers also ISO-8859-3.

OldCyr: LC 512 Old Cyrillic.

The OldCyr codeset supports Old Church Slavonic, Russian (old orthography) and Romanian (Cyrillic orthography). It also supports all Slavic Cyrillic-script languages, monotonic Greek, and most European Latin-script languages (except Asturian, Faroese, Icelandic, Livonian, Maltese, Sami, and Welsh):

OldCyr covers ISO-8859-2/5/9/13/16 and CP1250/1251/1253/1254/1257. Note that the Linux console does not handle combining characters correctly.

PolyGk: LC 512 Polytonic Greek.

The PolyGk codeset supports polytonic Greek and some European Latin-script languages (Dutch, French, German, Irish, Italian, Spanish):

PolyGk covers ISO-8859-7 and CP1253.

Other historic languages.

For romanized Ancient Egyptian see NAfr; for romanized Sanskrit see Thai.

Combined Braille codesets

The 256-glyph codesets listed above, such as 437 or WET, can be combined with the Brl codeset. The name of the resulting 512-glyph codeset is obtained by attaching _Brl to the name of the 256-glyph codeset, for instance 437_Brl:

or WET_Brl:

Compatibility codeset names for console-setup

Different Linux distributions provide different methods to configure the encoding, font, and keyboard mapping of the console. Some distributions use systemd's configuration file /etc/vconsole.conf; in this case the font must be fully specified in /etc/vconsole.conf. Others use the console-setup package and its configuration file /etc/default/console-setup. In the second case, the font may be fully specified, but console-setup is also able to guess a suitable font automatically based on the current encoding. This guessing, however, works only for fonts whose first name component is one of the 19 codesets known to console-setup, so for instance, it will work for a font named Uni2-Ttyp0Regular-18x9.psf.gz, but it will fail if the same font is named CEur_L-Ttyp0Regular-18x9.psf.gz.

If "configure" detects that the Linux distribution uses console-setup (or if "configure" is run with the option "--conslinuxnaming=console-setup"), those UW ttyp0 codeset names for which there is a corresponding console-setup codeset name are replaced by the latter upon font installation, so that codeset guessing works for UW ttyp0:

For instance, a regular 9x18 font for the Hebr_L codeset would be installed using the name Uni1-Ttyp0Regular-18x9.psf.gz, rather than Hebr_L-Ttyp0Regular-18x9.psf.gz.

Note that the character repertoires of the fonts that come with console-setup and the corresponding UW ttyp0 codesets do not agree exactly – on the other hand, even within the console-setup package, fonts with the same codeset name often have different character repertoires (e.g., Uni2-Fixed14.psf.gz supports Welsh, whereas Uni2-Terminus14.psf.gz and Uni2-VGA14.psf.gz don't; Uni2-Terminus14.psf.gz supports double arrows, whereas Uni2-Fixed14.psf.gz and Uni2-VGA14.psf.gz don't; Uni2-VGA14.psf.gz supports double line graphics, whereas Uni2-Fixed14.psf.gz and Uni2-Terminus14.psf.gz don't).

Machine-readable codeset descriptions

The directory doc/LinuxCodeSets contains machine-readable descriptions of the UW ttyp0 Linux console codesets.

Uwe Waldmann <uwe@mpi-inf.mpg.de>, 2025-09-08.