diff --git a/general-info/release-20a.txt b/general-info/release-20a.txt index 157ffc3e568afc039c436473c77b4f407dd6e2a9..6be8b26c34e1a27e5cd4b2e833f5de646f215fbb 100644 --- a/general-info/release-20a.txt +++ b/general-info/release-20a.txt @@ -37,9 +37,14 @@ New in this release: to specify the format. + The special variable STREAM:*DEFAULT-EXTERNAL-FORMAT* specifies the default format to be used for all streams. - Setting this to a new value will change the external format - for all streams to use the new format. This includes - *STANDARD-INPUT* and friends. + The default value is :iso8859-1. + + The standard streams, *standard-input*, *standard-output*, + and *standard-error* all default to + *default-external-format*. You can change the encoding used + for these streams by calling + STREAM:SET-SYSTEM-EXTERNAL-FORMAT to set the encoding for + all three streams. Alternatively, you can use (setf + external-format) to change the format for each stream. + Many external formats are supported. The complete list is in aliases, but we support at least :ISO-8859-1, :UTF-8, :UTF-16, :UTF-32, :CRLF.