Re: Can't get cyrillic script to appear in an xterm
Mikhail Zotov
Joost Kremers <joostk...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> [Followup-To: header set to alt.os.linux.slackware]
> bolta...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> > You would think that in 2009 trying to get non latin character sets to
> > work in a terminal would be fairly easy. Obviously I'm expecting too much.
>
> you're not. i just copied a random text from http://ru.wikipedia.org to emacs,
> then saved it as cyrillic.txt and then looked at it with less in my terminal.
> shows up just fine. i don't know russian but i can read cyrillic characters and
> they show up perfectly. the other day i also happened to get some email on a
> mailing list that quoted russian words in cyrillic. i read this mail in a
> terminal emulator through mutt running in a screen session. still, the cyrillic
> showed up fine.
There seems to be several different ways Cyrillic is shown in xterm if
locale defaults to POSIX and LANG="".
1) copy and paste some Cyrillic text from the web: the result is a
sequence of hash marks instead of letters, separated by spaces, commas,
etc.
2) paste the same text in an editor that supports this (nedit does not)
and save it, e.g., in the KOI8-R encoding. Let it be, say, test.txt.
Then:
$ cat test.txt
shows the text properly
$ less text.txt
"test.txt" may be a binary file. See it anyway? n
$ file test.txt
test.txt: DOS executable (COM)
$ less text.txt
"test.txt" may be a binary file. See it anyway? y
<EB><D5><DA><D8><CD><C9><CE>.....
--
Mikhail
Joost Kremers
> There seems to be several different ways Cyrillic is shown in xterm if
> locale defaults to POSIX and LANG="".
well, AFAIU, those settings aren't really advisable on a modern system...
--
Joost Kremers joostk...@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)
Mikhail Zotov
Joost Kremers <joostk...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mikhail Zotov wrote:
> > There seems to be several different ways Cyrillic is shown in xterm if
> > locale defaults to POSIX and LANG="".
>
> well, AFAIU, those settings aren't really advisable on a modern system...
What is suggested instead? (Personally, I just keep
/etc/profile.d/lang.sh intact.)
--
Mikhail
Joost Kremers
the default locale in lang.sh is en_US, which supports extended character sets,
unlike the old C locale. (though i'm really not sure how en_US handles cyrillic
in an xterm, i must admit.)
i've been using en_US.UTF-8 as locale for two or three years now and i've never
encountered a problem with it. (Pat still advises caution with utf locales in
lang.sh, but i feel it'd be safe to remove that warning.
Mikhail Zotov
Joost Kremers <joostk...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mikhail Zotov wrote:
> > On 26 Nov 2009 18:00:30 GMT
> > Joost Kremers <joostk...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Mikhail Zotov wrote:
> >> > There seems to be several different ways Cyrillic is shown in xterm if
> >> > locale defaults to POSIX and LANG="".
> >>
> >> well, AFAIU, those settings aren't really advisable on a modern system...
> >
> > What is suggested instead? (Personally, I just keep
> > /etc/profile.d/lang.sh intact.)
>
> the default locale in lang.sh is en_US, which supports extended character sets,
> unlike the old C locale. (though i'm really not sure how en_US handles cyrillic
> in an xterm, i must admit.)
>
> i've been using en_US.UTF-8 as locale for two or three years now and i've never
> encountered a problem with it. (Pat still advises caution with utf locales in
> lang.sh, but i feel it'd be safe to remove that warning.
OK, I see. Thank you for the reply.
--
Mikhail