Re: displaying Japanese in the virtual consoles/terminals in squeeze

[Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 09:10:48PM +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
> For reasons I don't care to debate, I have set my system's default
> language to Japanese. When I go to work in the virtual console windows
> (for instance, apt-get), I tend to get messages that should be in
> Japanese, but the Japanese is replaced by the Unicode replacement
> characters ("?"), which is no problem unless I hit some errors. Which,
> of course is a problem..

Normal Linux console is only good for UTF-8 within latin-like
characters.
 
> Trying to search the web for this, and all I can see is old stuff,
> stuff about game consoles, and stuff about setting up X11. I know I
> should be able to get better results, but I'm not very imaginative.

For example, Debian console installer runs on virtual console with
japanese display or any fancy characters.  This is because they run
special terminal program.

> Should be the same set of issues, except for the specific parameters,
> for any large-character-set language.

  jfbterm
  fbterm-ucimf
  fbterm
  bogl-bterm

Try one of these with appropriate font packages.  I think you can get
Japanese display.

> Anyone with a clue for me?

But for all practical purpose, Use X or run aptitude on normal Linux
console under any Locale with:

$ sudo LANGUAGE=fr_FR.UTF-8 aptitude
 or 
$ sudo LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 aptitude

Then you can read it :-)

Osamu