national characters displaying..?

bongo_zg · May 27, 2011, 8:56pm

I’m using OpenSuse 11.3, and I installed oracle into it…
I’ve read previously that linux uses UTF-8, but…

‘locale’ gives me result:
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_NUMERIC=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_TIME=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_COLLATE=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_MONETARY=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_MESSAGES=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_PAPER=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_NAME=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_ADDRESS=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_TELEPHONE=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_MEASUREMENT=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_IDENTIFICATION=“en_GB.UTF-8”
LC_ALL=

when I’m in kde, using XTerm (or anything else), I can see my national characters…
but, when I’m connecting through shell console, there no national characters…

why?

robin_listas · May 27, 2011, 9:20pm

On 2011-05-27 21:06, bongo zg wrote:
> but, when I’m connecting through shell console, there no national
> characters…

What “shell console”? What operating system and version?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

bongo_zg · May 27, 2011, 9:39pm

OpenSuse 11.3

shell console - like when you press ctrl+alt+f3

robin_listas · May 27, 2011, 10:38pm

On 2011-05-27 22:06, bongo zg wrote:
>
> OpenSuse 11.3
>
> shell console - like when you press ctrl+alt+f3

Ah, the virtual terminal in the same machine. That’s different.

What is the ‘locale’ output there?

Can you type and and/or read the special characters?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

hcvv · May 27, 2011, 11:11pm

And what is a “national character”? can you give an example?

bongo_zg · May 27, 2011, 11:59pm

the locale output is the same like the one from xterm/kde

special characters? not in the console (ctrl+alt+f3)

bongo_zg · May 28, 2011, 12:00am

đ or Đ (croatian characters)…
ž or Ž

actually, the only character that I see correct in shell is Đ (if you see them on screen)

martin_helm · May 28, 2011, 12:36am

bongo zg wrote:

>
> đ or Đ (croatian characters)…
> ž or Ž
>
> actually, the only character that I see correct in shell is Đ (if you
> see them on screen)
>
I think what you need to do is to adjust the settings for the console font.
The config file is /etc/sysconfig/console, it has an entry (in my case,
yours may be different)
CONSOLE_FONT=“lat9w-16.psfu”
Which fonts you can use you will see by inspecting the folder
/usr/share/kbd/consolefonts
check which font supports the special characterset for your locale.
You need to run


/etc/init.d/kbd reload

as root afterwards (or reboot).

You can also use yast -> /etc/sysconfig editor -> hardware -> console for
the settings

martin_helm · May 28, 2011, 12:48am

I want to add that, when you are on a virtual terminal (not in X) you can
show the characters of the font with the command


showconsolefont

so that you have feedback what it contains.

robin_listas · May 28, 2011, 12:50am

On 2011-05-28 00:06, bongo zg wrote:
> special characters? not in the console (ctrl+alt+f3)

Neither read nor write?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · May 28, 2011, 1:26am

I found the following proposal for the font with google (no idea if that is
correct but you might try)

lat2-16.psfu

robin_listas · May 28, 2011, 1:33am

On 2011-05-28 00:48, martin_helm wrote:
> I want to add that, when you are on a virtual terminal (not in X) you can
> show the characters of the font with the command
>


> showconsolefont
>

> so that you have feedback what it contains.

Interesting. Mine also doesn’t displays UTF-8 chars, like the euro symbol.
Tested on two computers.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · May 28, 2011, 1:47am

Carlos E. R. wrote:

> On 2011-05-28 00:48, martin_helm wrote:
>> I want to add that, when you are on a virtual terminal (not in X) you can
>> show the characters of the font with the command
>>


>> showconsolefont
>>

so that you have feedback what it contains.

Interesting. Mine also doesn’t displays UTF-8 chars, like the euro symbol.
Tested on two computers.

An easy way to test the available fonts is to use setfont at the console
like


setfont lat2-16.psfu
showconsolefont

so you can easily see more or less interactive the contents.

lat9w-16.psfu contains a euro symbol, maybe there is also a better font with
the euro symbol for your (spanish?) locale.

robin_listas · May 28, 2011, 2:38am

On 2011-05-28 01:47, martin_helm wrote:

> An easy way to test the available fonts is to use setfont at the console
> like
>


> setfont lat2-16.psfu
> showconsolefont
>

> so you can easily see more or less interactive the contents.
>
> lat9w-16.psfu contains a euro symbol, maybe there is also a better font with
> the euro symbol for your (spanish?) locale.

That sample font is worse than my default one, “lat9w-16.psfu”. The “Ñ”
stops working.

Still no euro symbol here. I can not type it. I can see it inside files
that contains it, but I can not type it.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · May 28, 2011, 2:51am

@Carlos
The font in the example was for croatian (so not meant for you just a random
example), I guess you need to investigate the readme’s in
/usr/share/doc/packages/kbd/fonts if they contain something that helps you
to find a better font. The euro symbol works for me when I type it in the
console with lat9w-16.psfu and typing AltGr + e (results in €) on my german
keyboard (as it does in kde).
Maybe it is your key mapping and not the font which is the problem?

robin_listas · May 28, 2011, 3:58am

On 2011-05-28 02:51, martin_helm wrote:
> @Carlos

> to find a better font. The euro symbol works for me when I type it in the
> console with lat9w-16.psfu and typing AltGr + e (results in €) on my german
> keyboard (as it does in kde).

It displays, but I can not type it.

> Maybe it is your key mapping and not the font which is the problem?

On two computers?
It must be, but no idea what the issue is. A bug on the keymap perhaps.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

hcvv · May 28, 2011, 10:48am

I am almost sure that terminal emulations (like Konsole, even Xterm and friends) can do more in this aspect then what in fact is the fysical console… That fysical console is of course also emulated (logical console) but has very many less features. It has to because all sorts of facilities available to the X emulators (like a pletora of fonts) are not available to them. They must be able to function even in the most primitive circumstances (while booting there is ot much available isn’t there?).

Thus it is nor surpri=sing to me that an strict VT100/ANSI terminal emulation can only handle ASCII characters or maybe the full 8 bits set, but then only one character mapping (thus not Unicode.)

robin_listas · May 28, 2011, 2:50pm

On 2011-05-28 11:06, hcvv wrote:
>
> I am almost sure that terminal emulations (like Konsole, even Xterm and
> friends) can do more in this aspect then what in fact is the fysical
> console… That fysical console is of course also emulated (logical
> console) but has very many less features. It has to because all sorts of
> facilities available to the X emulators (like a pletora of fonts) are
> not available to them. They must be able to function even in the most
> primitive circumstances (while booting there is ot much available isn’t
> there?).
>
> Thus it is nor surpri=sing to me that an strict VT100/ANSI terminal
> emulation can only handle ASCII characters or maybe the full 8 bits set,
> but then only one character mapping (thus not Unicode.)

It probably depends on whether it uses the old bios functions to print text
on the screen, which can only print the 255 chars in the map, or replace
that map with another. Linux I assume uses its own method bypassing the
bios, so I don’t really see why there couldn’t be support for the full
UTF-8 charset - except that it hasn’t been done.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

martin_helm · May 28, 2011, 3:19pm

hcvv wrote:
> Thus it is nor surpri=sing to me that an strict VT100/ANSI terminal
> emulation can only handle ASCII characters or maybe the full 8 bits set,
> but then only one character mapping (thus not Unicode.)

Not really, the linux console is capable to work with unicode and national
characters for many years. Of course more limited that X programs like xterm
or konsole which have the full support for the x fonts.
It is the representation on the screen which is limited so far to the fonts
which in most cases contain 256 characters (some 512 characters) and have to
be mapped from unicode to what is in the font. The psfu fonts contain not
only the font but at the same time the unicode mapping (that is the reason
they are called psfu, the psf fonts need an external unicode mapping).
Some info about that http://tldp.org/LDP/LGNET/issue91/loozzr.html
/usr/share/doc/packages/kbd/fonts contains some README files for the console
fonts.

bongo_zg · May 28, 2011, 7:45pm

tnx for the help…

there’s a lat9w-16.psu in hardware->console -> console_font

I checked /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts, but I do not know wich font would be appropriate (on windows, it 8852p2), but don’t know wich is on OpenSuse 11.3…
I checked ‘showconsolefont’ and it show some of the characters