From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Feb 21 01:54:03 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: Questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 34C6916A400 for ; Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:54:03 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from yuri.pankov@gmail.com) Received: from darklight.org.ru (darklight.org.ru [IPv6:2001:470:1f09:aa::dead:c0de]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8AF4813C442 for ; Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:54:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from yuri.pankov@gmail.com) Received: from darklight.org.ru (yuri@localhost [IPv6:::1]) by darklight.org.ru (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m1L1s1g8069628; Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:54:01 +0300 (MSK) (envelope-from yuri.pankov@gmail.com) Received: (from yuri@localhost) by darklight.org.ru (8.14.2/8.14.2/Submit) id m1L1s1AY069627; Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:54:01 +0300 (MSK) (envelope-from yuri.pankov@gmail.com) X-Authentication-Warning: darklight.org.ru: yuri set sender to yuri.pankov@gmail.com using -f Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:54:00 +0300 From: Yuri Pankov To: Kevin Monceaux Message-ID: <20080221015400.GA69621@darklight.org.ru> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17 (2007-11-01) Cc: Questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Unicode Console? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:54:03 -0000 On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 07:28:52PM -0600, Kevin Monceaux wrote: > Fellow FreeBSD Fans, > > I've been running FreeBSD on a web/mail server, which I only have remote > access to, for a while now. At home I've been running Linux since the 1.xx > kernel days but am considering switching my desktop box to FreeBSD. > > I never given much thought to my locale setting until recently. I'm about > to start participating in an online Spanish study group, via e-mail, and > might also be following along with an Old English study group. I'm an old > fashioned kinda user and prefer to do as much as I can via the text > console. I compose/read e-mail via Alpine. After some trial and error I > finally convinced my Linux box, currently running Arch Linux, to handle all > of the "special" characters I need via the console. In the end, it > amounted to: > > 1. Add "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" to /etc/locale.gen > > 2. run locale-gen > > 3. set LANG to en_US.UTF-8 > > 4. Switch to a font that contains the symbols I need. I'm currently > using one of the Terminus console fonts. For some reason I had to > switch to a framebuffer console otherwise after executing > unicode_start the font was way too dim. > > 5. run unicode_start(added to my .cshrc file) > > After the above I'm able to display various accented characters such as á, > é, ì, ö, û, ç, etc. along with the Spanish ñ, inverted punctuation > marks ¡, ¿, Old English thorn(þ), eth(ð), ash(æ), etc. Also, from > reading mail from various mailing lists I've noticed that it also handles > the Cyrillic alphabet and part of the Greek alphabet. > > From what I've seen of FreeBSD I'd expect it to have console capabilities > that are superior to those of Linux. But, I haven't managed to figure out > how to achieve similar functionality via the FreeBSD text consoles. I'm > currently testing FreeBSD(7.0-RC2) under VMware. Can anyone point me in > the right direction? > > > > > Kevin > http://www.RawFedDogs.net > http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org > Bruceville, TX > > Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes. > Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!! Unicode isn't supported in syscons at all (AFAIK). Check http://opal.com/jr/freebsd/unicode/ for more complete overview. HTH, Yuri