(elisp)Character Sets


Character Sets
==============

   Emacs classifies characters into various "character sets", each of
which has a name which is a symbol.  Each character belongs to one and
only one character set.

   In general, there is one character set for each distinct script.  For
example, `latin-iso8859-1' is one character set, `greek-iso8859-7' is
another, and `ascii' is another.  An Emacs character set can hold at
most 9025 characters; therefore, in some cases, characters that would
logically be grouped together are split into several character sets.
For example, one set of Chinese characters, generally known as Big 5,
is divided into two Emacs character sets, `chinese-big5-1' and
`chinese-big5-2'.

   ASCII characters are in character set `ascii'.  The non-ASCII
characters 128 through 159 are in character set `eight-bit-control',
and codes 160 through 255 are in character set `eight-bit-graphic'.

 - Function: charsetp object
     Returns `t' if OBJECT is a symbol that names a character set,
     `nil' otherwise.

 - Function: charset-list
     This function returns a list of all defined character set names.

 - Function: char-charset character
     This function returns the name of the character set that CHARACTER
     belongs to.

 - Function: charset-plist charset
     This function returns the charset property list of the character
     set CHARSET.  Although CHARSET is a symbol, this is not the same
     as the property list of that symbol.  Charset properties are used
     for special purposes within Emacs; for example,
     `preferred-coding-system' helps determine which coding system to
     use to encode characters in a charset.


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