+@cindex fonts for various scripts
+@cindex Intlfonts package, installation
+ To display the script(s) used by your language environment on a
+graphical display, you need to have a suitable font. If some of the
+characters appear as empty boxes, you should install the GNU Intlfonts
+package, which includes fonts for all supported scripts.@footnote{If
+you run Emacs on X, you need to inform the X server about the location
+of the newly installed fonts with the following commands:
+
+@example
+ xset fp+ /usr/local/share/emacs/fonts
+ xset fp rehash
+@end example
+}
+@xref{Fontsets}, for more details about setting up your fonts.
+
+@findex set-locale-environment
+@vindex locale-language-names
+@vindex locale-charset-language-names
+@cindex locales
+ Some operating systems let you specify the character-set locale you
+are using by setting the locale environment variables @env{LC_ALL},
+@env{LC_CTYPE}, or @env{LANG}.@footnote{If more than one of these is
+set, the first one that is nonempty specifies your locale for this
+purpose.} During startup, Emacs looks up your character-set locale's
+name in the system locale alias table, matches its canonical name
+against entries in the value of the variables
+@code{locale-charset-language-names} and @code{locale-language-names},
+and selects the corresponding language environment if a match is found.
+(The former variable overrides the latter.) It also adjusts the display
+table and terminal coding system, the locale coding system, the
+preferred coding system as needed for the locale, and---last but not
+least---the way Emacs decodes non-@acronym{ASCII} characters sent by your keyboard.
+
+ If you modify the @env{LC_ALL}, @env{LC_CTYPE}, or @env{LANG}
+environment variables while running Emacs, you may want to invoke the
+@code{set-locale-environment} function afterwards to readjust the
+language environment from the new locale.
+
+@vindex locale-preferred-coding-systems
+ The @code{set-locale-environment} function normally uses the preferred
+coding system established by the language environment to decode system
+messages. But if your locale matches an entry in the variable
+@code{locale-preferred-coding-systems}, Emacs uses the corresponding
+coding system instead. For example, if the locale @samp{ja_JP.PCK}
+matches @code{japanese-shift-jis} in
+@code{locale-preferred-coding-systems}, Emacs uses that encoding even
+though it might normally use @code{japanese-iso-8bit}.
+
+ You can override the language environment chosen at startup with
+explicit use of the command @code{set-language-environment}, or with
+customization of @code{current-language-environment} in your init
+file.