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Localisation¶

DOSBox Staging automatically detects your host operating system’s language, country, and keyboard layout, so in most cases everything works out of the box. The auto-detection checks the list of preferred languages in your OS settings, matches keyboard layouts from your configured host layouts, and selects an appropriate country code. If you need to override the defaults — perhaps you’re running a German game on an English system, or you need a specific date format — the settings below let you fine-tune the regional behaviour.

Warning

DOSBox Staging’s translations are a community-based effort. Some translations may be incomplete or behind the current English version, so translated interface messages may occasionally be missing or out of date.

Interface language¶

The language setting controls the language of DOSBox Staging’s own interface messages (not the DOS programs themselves). It can be changed at runtime via config -set language=pl. The currently bundled translations are German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian.

DOSBox Staging uses the gettext .po translation file format, which makes contributing translations straightforward with tools like Poedit.

Country and date/time formatting¶

The country setting controls DOS-level formatting conventions: date and time format, decimal separators, currency symbols, and so on. The default auto detects the appropriate country from your host OS settings.

The locale_period setting controls whether formatting follows historic DOS conventions (how things looked on a real DOS PC of the era), modern conventions (consistent with current-day practices), or your host OS’s native settings. The default native mode reuses your desktop’s display formats where the DOS locale system can represent them.

Keyboard layout and code pages¶

The keyboard_layout setting selects the DOS keyboard layout, determining which characters are produced by which keys. The default auto detects your layout from the host OS. A layout can include a code page suffix — for example, uk 850 selects the British layout with a Western European screen font.

Code pages control which character set is available on screen. DOSBox Staging bundles the FreeDOS ISO, KOI, MAC, and WIN code page packages, providing broad coverage of Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. After startup, use the KEYB command to manage keyboard layouts and code pages (run HELP KEYB for details).

To see what’s available, start DOSBox Staging with the following command line arguments:

Configuration settings¶

Interface language¶

You can set the interface language in the [dosbox] configuration section.

language¶

Select the language of DOSBox Staging’s interface messages.

Possible values:

  • auto default – Detect the language from the host OS preferred languages list.
  • <value> – Load a translation from the given file.

Note

The following language files are available: de, en, es, fr, it, nl, pl, pt_BR, and ru. English is built-in; the rest is stored in the bundled resources/translations folder.

Regional settings¶

You can set these in the [dos] configuration section.

country¶

Set DOS country code (auto by default). This affects country-specific information such as date, time, and decimal formats. If set to auto, it selects the country code reflecting the host OS settings.

Note

The list of country codes can be displayed using the --list-countries command-line argument.

keyboard_layout¶

Keyboard layout code (auto by default). Set to auto to detect the layout from the host OS settings. The layout can be followed by the code page number, e.g., uk 850 selects a Western European screen font. After startup, use the KEYB command to manage keyboard layouts and code pages (run HELP KEYB for details).

Note

The list of supported keyboard layout codes can be displayed using the --list-layouts command-line argument (e.g., uk is the British English layout).

locale_period¶

Select which era of locale data to use.

Possible values:

  • native default – Reuse current host OS settings, regardless of the country set; use modern data to fill in the gaps when the DOS locale system is too limited to follow the desktop settings.
  • historic – If data is available for the given country, mimic old DOS behaviour when displaying time, dates, or numbers.
  • modern – Follow current-day practices for a user experience more consistent with typical host systems.