Either

(1) type at the command prompt in DOSBOX:

config -set "keyboard layout=sv"

or (2) enter at the DOS prompt:

KEYB sv

or (3)

find (search the wiki for its location) dosbox.conf and find the line that begins

keyboardlayout=auto

and change it to

keyboardlayout=sv

And this is described (with Swedish used as the example) here:

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/KEYB

What I am looking for is a solution to this problem

national character problem

You can type swedish but you can't create swedish filenames. AFAIU that's how dos worked, so there is not going to be a solution

I have continued too Google a lot and what I believe that I am actually looking for is Long filename (lfn) support since this would support UTF-16?

Do you know of a thread where they discuss LFN?

Extra:
For ppl who want to run SV under 437 instead 850 which is standard.

I could not configure the configfile such that
-------------------------
keyboardlayout=sv
------------------------
Would give you 437.

Instead I added following under autoexec in the config file:
-------------------
KEYB sv 437
------------------
This gives you Codepage 437 with layout SV.

There is no way to access long file names in mounted directories using DOSBox, as there are no DOS games that require this capability. You can copy files to a hard disk image, and then boot a version of DOS with long file name support to access the files on the disk image, but that's as far as it goes.

Alternatively, you can just use VMware, VirtualBox, or some other virtualization program.

We already had a solution where we were using wmware. Using DosBox for what we do works well except that it would be nice with LFN. And I know DosBox is meant for games. Still I'm interested to see how much work it would be to add that support, and if there is someone who knows of a thread that is discussing this?

What we have figured out how to do so far is:
1. Printing nice PDF using LaserPrinting driver.
2. Copying text to DosBos.
3. How to have the folders synced to Dropbox
4. Using 437 CP and SV layout.

Feels sad to stop now when the environment does so much cool things. 😀

So next step, LFN.
And also copy from DosBox

Could you tell us exactly how you accomplished 1 through 3? (and "copy from DOSBox"?) We know of some methods, and would like to know more!

1. Print to file using following code in conf:
parallel1=file append:C:\output.txt

Then catch that file with the windows program DOSPRN. Which gives you a nice PDF even for Laserjet printers.

2. Using the Clip program in windows then press break to paste

3.Just mount a part where dropbox is a part then press ctrl F4 and it will reread "update" the folders which you added the file to.

Now i have a new problem with symbols.

I have the keyboard that I want using: KEYB sv 437

Though I can not type $ or £.
Most important is $. and remapping have no effect.

Any suggestions?

After entering KEYB SV 437:

Hold down the right-hand Alt key (AltGr on many European keyboards) and press 4; that produces $.
Hold down the right-hand Alt key (AltGr on many European keyboards) and press 3; that produces £.

Dominus wrote:

You can type swedish but you can't create swedish filenames. AFAIU that's how dos worked, so there is not going to be a solution

Which is wrong. MS-DOS in fact did suport non-English file names. It even had special tables in COUNTRY.SYS for character capitalization in file names. MS-DOS supported without problems the usage of characters 0x80 to 0xFF in file names, with the sole exception of one character (I forgot which) which if a file name begins with it, it means the file is deleted.

Battler wrote:

MS-DOS supported without problems the usage of characters 0x80 to 0xFF in file names, with the sole exception of one character (I forgot which) which if a file name begins with it, it means the file is deleted.

You just brought back a long-forgotten memory! The character that signified a deleted file was E5. Just fire up your copy of the Norton Utilities, go to the disk editor, and change E5 to something else, and your file magically comes back to life. I forgot all about that...

And I think the 0xE5 limitation only applies to the very first character of the file name. Since Japanese versions of DOS use that character without problem in non-first position in file names (it is a valid DBCS trail byte in code page 932).

Yes, that's right - when you deleted a file, the first character in the filename got replaced by E5. That's why undelete programs restored the filename with (I think) a question mark as the first character.)