Re: UTF-8 locale, strange chars in X terminal pager(s), specifically man pages

[fbhjr@fhase.net (Frederick B. Henry Jr.)]

On Friday 01 Oct 2004 01:54:19 +0200, Martin Dickopp wrote:

> fbhjr@fhase.net (Frederick B. Henry Jr.) writes:
> 
> > Context: Debian unstable. [...] Since switching my locale to
> > en_US.UTF-8 (dpkg-reconfigure locales),
> 
> I think "dpkg-reconfigure locales" takes of that, but just to be sure,
> could you verify that /etc/locale.gen contains a line
> 
>   en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

It does indeed. 

> If you re-run "locale-gen" as root, does that emit any error messages?

No errors.

> > whenever I use any pager (more, less, most) to read a man page I get
> > strange chars, e.g.:
> >
> > man procmailrc (PAGER=/usr/bin/most) yields: 
> >
> > "delivering and nonâ@~^Pdelivering recipes.."  
> >
> > That intercalating pattern -- â@~^PP -- is throughout the man page.
> 
> To find out if it's a problem of "man" or the pager, use "cat" as pager.
> In particular, what does
> 
>   PAGER=cat man cat | hexdump -C | grep ^000006

[snip your hexdump] 

Here is the output of your command on my box:

fbhjr@achilles:~$  PAGER=cat man cat | hexdump -C | grep ^000006
Reformatting cat(1), please wait...
00000600  20 47 72 61 6e 6c 75 6e  64 20 61 6e 64 20 52 69  | Granlund and Ri|
00000610  63 68 61 72 64 20 4d 2e  20 53 74 61 6c 6c 6d 61  |chard M. Stallma|
00000620  6e 2e 0a 0a 52 08 52 45  08 45 50 08 50 4f 08 4f  |n...R.RE.EP.PO.O|
00000630  52 08 52 54 08 54 49 08  49 4e 08 4e 47 08 47 20  |R.RT.TI.IN.NG.G |
00000640  42 08 42 55 08 55 47 08  47 53 08 53 0a 20 20 20  |B.BU.UG.GS.S.   |
00000650  20 20 20 20 52 65 70 6f  72 74 20 62 75 67 73 20  |    Report bugs |
00000660  74 6f 20 3c 62 75 67 2d  63 6f 72 65 75 74 69 6c  |to <bug-coreutil|
00000670  73 40 67 6e 75 2e 6f 72  67 3e 2e 0a 0a 43 08 43  |s@gnu.org>...C.C|
00000680  4f 08 4f 50 08 50 59 08  59 52 08 52 49 08 49 47  |O.OP.PY.YR.RI.IG|
00000690  08 47 48 08 48 54 08 54  0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  |.GH.HT.T.       |
000006a0  43 6f 70 79 72 69 67 68  74 20 c2 a9 20 32 30 30  |Copyright .. 200|
000006b0  34 20 46 72 65 65 20 53  6f 66 74 77 61 72 65 20  |4 Free Software |
000006c0  46 6f 75 6e 64 61 74 69  6f 6e 2c 20 49 6e 63 2e  |Foundation, Inc.|
000006d0  0a 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  54 68 69 73 20 69 73 20  |.       This is |
000006e0  66 72 65 65 20 73 6f 66  74 77 61 72 65 3b 20 73  |free software; s|
000006f0  65 65 20 74 68 65 20 73  6f 75 72 63 65 20 66 6f  |ee the source fo|

I note some differences with your output...just not sure how to interpret them. :(

Fred Henry, Jr.