Mutt locale settings [Was: Re: /etc/environment]

[Wouter Hanegraaff <wouter@blub.net>]

On Wed, Aug 09, 2000 at 08:49:23PM +0300, Lehel Bernadt wrote:
> 
> On 09-Aug-2000 Wouter Hanegraaff wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I was having trouble with the display of special characters in mutt when
> > logged in using ssh, and I found that the LANG environment variable is
> > the culprit.

Since mutt was the only program that doesn't display these characters
correctly, I searched the mutt mailing list archives.  I still don't
understand why unsetting LANG solves my problem, because the correct fix
is to set LC_CTYPE to an appropriate value.

> I've no idea what the cause of your problem is, AFAIK when LANG is unset,
> programs should fall back to the default locale, which is 'C'. And on my box
> 8bit chars are displayed correctly no matter what LANG is set to. 

Locale settings are not the same as LANG settings, LC_CTYPE is for
character classification, and LANG is for displaying programs in
different languages. Mutt uses both, so when I set LANG=dutch, I get a
dutch interface, and when I set LC_CTYPE=dutch, I get special characters
displayed right (although just setting LANG=dutch with LC_CTYPE unset
fixes the locale settings too, strange enough).

Wouter