> On Oct 6, 2025, at 10:12 AM, Fritz Mueller via Freedos-devel 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Okay, I compared some of the contents of pt and ptb files and they seem to be 
> less different. Most of them either used pt or ptb, except ctmouse and 
> freecom.
>  
> As 8.4 never worked I assume that former .ptbr was never used, so I think 
> using only .pt for all files should be okay, of course the existing .ptb 
> should be kept for security (if really necessary, it is not bad to have 
> them). Is this okay or are there reasons that we do not know?
>  

I am by know means an expert on this. 

I have have very little knowledge regarding these languages or any language 
other than English.

I am not advocating keeping, removing, combining or any action in any way 
regarding these translations.

I am only submitting an additional data point. I do not know how relevant it 
may be…

While recently working on a program that could convert codepage text to UTF-8 
and back to codepage, that utility could perform the conversions automatically 
without any user input beyond the filename (like mydoc.txt). It would analyze 
the file to determine its encoding determine the direction of the process (to 
or from UTF-8). It used dictionaries that comprised unique words for roughly 
250 languages, commonality of words and various CP<—>UNICODE maps. It would 
weigh all of that data to determine the probable language and best suited 
codepage. 

In part because this was an experiment, and in part because of the large amount 
of data processing, this was not a DOS program. However on  semi-recent 
hardware, it was reasonably quick. 

The utility could usually detect the difference in the text between similar 
languages and would correctly identify languages like: Portuguese, 
Portuguese-Brazil, Canadian, French Canadian and others. 

Wether or not those differences are important or not, I could not say. It could 
be something as simple as:

American English: "After getting cleaned up in the bathroom, I got back on the 
highway. My truck's engine made a funny sound.  So, I had to pull over again 
and check under the hood.”

British English:  "After getting cleaned up in the loo, I got back on the 
motorway. My lorry’s engine made a strange noise.  So, I had to pull over again 
and have a look under the bonnet."

While they “can” be different, most individuals from either country would be 
able to read and understand either version.

:-)

 

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