Terminal I/O Encoding

Emacs can use coding systems to decode keyboard input and encode terminal output. This is useful for terminals that transmit or display text using a particular encoding, such as Latin-1. Emacs does not set last-coding-system-used when encoding or decoding terminal I/O.

Function: keyboard-coding-system &optional terminal

This function returns the coding system used for decoding keyboard input from terminal. A value of no-conversion means no decoding is done. If terminal is omitted or nil, it means the selected frame’s terminal. See Multiple Terminals.

Command: set-keyboard-coding-system coding-system &optional terminal

This command specifies coding-system as the coding system to use for decoding keyboard input from terminal. If coding-system is nil, that means not to decode keyboard input. If terminal is a frame, it means that frame’s terminal; if it is nil, that means the currently selected frame’s terminal. See Multiple Terminals. Note that on modern MS-Windows systems Emacs always uses Unicode input when decoding keyboard input, so the encoding set by this command has no effect on Windows.

Function: terminal-coding-system &optional terminal

This function returns the coding system that is in use for encoding terminal output from terminal. A value of no-conversion means no encoding is done. If terminal is a frame, it means that frame’s terminal; if it is nil, that means the currently selected frame’s terminal.

Command: set-terminal-coding-system coding-system &optional terminal

This command specifies coding-system as the coding system to use for encoding terminal output from terminal. If coding-system is nil, that means not to encode terminal output. If terminal is a frame, it means that frame’s terminal; if it is nil, that means the currently selected frame’s terminal.