Re: accented chars. shown as question marks in non-browser tools, sarge
Arlie Stephens wrote:
I've got the same basic problem with just about every tool I use,
notably my email client mutt. Other versions of linux have somehow
Do you use mutt in xterm? If so, it will be very difficult to get this
right. Try this:
1. Use gnome-terminal or konsole (at least it out)
2. Make sure your locale is set to UTF-8 (see further below).
3. Make sure the relevant language fonts are installed.
automatically done the right thing - for the European ISO standard at
least (I forget the precise number), and their version of emacs would
also successfully cut and paste non-US-character text, and asked me what
encoding I preferred to use. Debian hasn't done the right thing since
sarge - I don't remember for sure whether woody worked right, or
whether my last good experience was on redhat - and I've had no luck
whatsoever finding documentation or a FAQ that actually corresponded
to anything real and workable. (Don't tell me to process 'locales'
that don't exist on my system, without at least giving me a clue what
package might contain them - or how to create my own - given that I've
installed every relevant-seeming package for every language I want to
be able to read.)
Give the "set" command on a command prompt and see that you get for
these variables (I have the following):
$> set | grep LANG
LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_CA:en_US:en_GB:en
If your LANG is not set to UTF-8, you need to set it right. Make sure
you have the various locales install:
$> locale -a
C
en_CA
en_CA.iso88591
en_CA.utf8
en_GB
en_GB.iso88591
en_GB.iso885915
en_GB.utf8
If you do not a list similar to the one above, you need to generate the
locale choices:
<become root>
#> dpkg-reconfigure locale
(or is it locales? try both). It will give you an ncurses based list of
locale choices to generate, Select the one you want and press OK. Next
screen will ask you to set a default locale. Set a UTF-8 locale. After
this configuration, logout and log in again. Use the "set" command again
to make sure you have a UTF-8 locale now.
Next, make sure you have relevant fonts install. I guess it is good to
have the ttf-* fonts installed, at least the ones you think you might need.
Finally, open gnome-terminal or konsole and fire up mutt. You should see
various language characters in all their glory. BTW, xterm does not
support UTF-8 properly yet.
Etch _claimed_ to default to UTF-8 - not my preference, but any
consistent and working setup is better than nothing - and I need to
check whether _that_ encoding actually works. (How can I find some
text that's definitely encoded in that format?) But what I want is the
ability to read anything. Well, anything in any European language,
with emphasis on french, german, and icelandic, plus a few related
dead languages.)
Using a windows XP box for all my non-english language work is *not*
making me happy.
True. I wanted the same thing. It turns out that making international
languages work is easier in Linux (I have done this in Debian Etch, Sid
and Ubuntu also) than in Windows! At least for me.
->HS
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