Re: UTF-8

[Arne Goetje <20020531antispam@gmx.net>]

On Wednesday 11 September 2002 10:16, Jay Hap-hang Yu wrote:
> I am trying to convert just about everything (file name, document
> encoding, LANG environment, etc) from Big5 to UTF-8. I'm running sid and
> I encountered plenty of problems

good... me too... :) UTF-8 support is still a hassle... although I need it 
because I have to deal with several languages besides traditional chinese 
and english...

> 1.no Xlib support (?) -- Seems that the debian XFree86 4.1.0 doesn't
> come with all the locales Inside  /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale, there's no
> zh_*.UTF8 directories, and the README inside says that UTF-8 is broken
> in this version of X, damn!

works fine for me...
try
dpkg-reconfigure locales 
and select the UTF-8 versions.
I use en_US-UTF-8 as default locale.
I further use KDE as desktop and set everything to unicode (ISO 10???).
The fonts are set to Arial Unicode MS... yes, I took the font from M$... 
but the Arphic fonts work as well (as long as you only want to display 
chinese and english...)

> 2. Chinput doesn't come up -- chinput no come up when CTRL+SPACE is
> pressed.

same with XCIN... they only support BIG5 and the other local encodings and 
want to have them as LOCALE in the terminal form where you are starting 
it...
So, I'm still stuck to Xcinterm-big5... but it works as well. I usually 
start this one and open the other applications from there... (Kmail, 
OpenOffice, gaim, galeon, ...) The KDE applications use Unicode internally, 
so there is no problem, even with filenames. Other Applications, like gaim, 
galeon and others change their default language to Chinese and use Big5 
encoding for filenames and displaying chars...
OpenOffice uses Unicode internally but cannot handle unicode chars in 
filenames... simply doesn't display them...

> 3. How to configure mlterm/rxvt/uxterm  to display CJK characters?

I didn't find any solution yet... uxterm can display some chinese chars. It 
uses the default font plus a CJK extension which unfortunately only exists 
for Korean and Japanese (default). They both also include simplefied 
Chinese chars, but no Traditional... :(
So, at least you can display some Chinese chars with uxterm in UTF-8 
encoding.

> 4. there's no fixed width Chinese fonts that support unicode.

there is 'unifont' as a bitmap font. This is used in 'yudit' the unicode 
text editor... great tool... :)

> 5. xfs-xtt is very unstable (crashes alot when viewing CJK web page with
> mozilla)

no experience... I use the builtin xtt module in XFree86... (have to 
specify it in the XFree86-4.conf)

> 6. are there any utility/script that convert my big5 chinese filenames
> to UTF-8?

didn't see any...
Filenames are stored in unicode automatically in KDE... but they can only 
be displayed in KDE apps correctly... :(
I have no experience for Gnome only users, because I couldn't get Gnome to 
display anti aliased fonts in unicode...

Further settings I have made:
- Enable Anti-Aliasing in KDE
- Compile Kernel with UTF-8 as default encoding

Hope that helps...

I also hope that the developers of the chinese apps will enable UTF-8 
support soon... (especially in XCIN and then have a switch to switch on the 
fly from traditional to simplefied chars and HK extensions...)

CU
Arne

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