11.11 Character Processing

Command: c1 [state]

(none)
Change c1 code processing. `c1 on' tells screen to treat the input characters between 128 and 159 as control functions. Such an 8-bit code is normally the same as ESC followed by the corresponding 7-bit code. The default setting is to process c1 codes and can be changed with the `defc1' command. Users with fonts that have usable characters in the c1 positions may want to turn this off.

Command: gr [state]

(none)
Turn GR charset switching on/off. Whenever screen sees an input char with an 8th bit set, it will use the charset stored in the GR slot and print the character with the 8th bit stripped. The default (see also `defgr') is not to process GR switching because otherwise the ISO88591 charset would not work.

Command: bce [state]

(none)
Change background-color-erase setting. If `bce' is set to on, all characters cleared by an erase/insert/scroll/clear operation will be displayed in the current background color. Otherwise the default background color is used.

Command: encoding enc [denc]

(none)
Tell screen how to interpret the input/output. The first argument sets the encoding of the current window. Each window can emulate a different encoding. The optional second parameter overwrites the encoding of the connected terminal. It should never be needed as screen uses the locale setting to detect the encoding. There is also a way to select a terminal encoding depending on the terminal type by using the `KJ' termcap entry. See section 16.5 Special Terminal Capabilities.

Supported encodings are eucJP, SJIS, eucKR, eucCN, Big5, KOI8-R, CP1251, UTF-8, ISO8859-2, ISO8859-3, ISO8859-4, ISO8859-5, ISO8859-6, ISO8859-7, ISO8859-8, ISO8859-9, ISO8859-10, ISO8859-15, jis.

See also `defencoding', which changes the default setting of a new window.

Command: charset set

(none)
Change the current character set slot designation and charset mapping. The first four character of set are treated as charset designators while the fifth and sixth character must be in range `0' to `3' and set the GL/GR charset mapping. On every position a `.' may be used to indicate that the corresponding charset/mapping should not be changed (set is padded to six characters internally by appending `.' chars). New windows have `BBBB02' as default charset, unless a `encoding' command is active.

The current setting can be viewed with the 11.6 Info command.

Command: utf8 [state [dstate]]

(none)
Change the encoding used in the current window. If utf8 is enabled, the strings sent to the window will be UTF-8 encoded and vice versa. Omitting the parameter toggles the setting. If a second parameter is given, the display's encoding is also changed (this should rather be done with screen's `-U' option). See also `defutf8', which changes the default setting of a new window.

Command: defc1 state

(none)
Same as the `c1' command except that the default setting for new windows is changed. Initial setting is `on'.

Command: defgr state

(none)
Same as the `gr' command except that the default setting for new windows is changed. Initial setting is `off'.

Command: defbce state

(none)
Same as the `bce' command except that the default setting for new windows is changed. Initial setting is `off'.

Command: defencoding enc

(none)
Same as the `encoding' command except that the default setting for new windows is changed. Initial setting is the encoding taken from the terminal.

Command: defcharset [set]

Like the `charset' command except that the default setting for new windows is changed. Shows current default if called without argument.

Command: defutf8 state

(none)
Same as the `utf8' command except that the default setting for new windows is changed. Initial setting is on if screen was started with `-U', otherwise off.