From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Feb 21 06:49:59 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 8866916A404 for ; Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:49:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kamikaze@bsdforen.de) Received: from mail.bsdforen.de (bsdforen.de [212.204.60.79]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C61D13C457 for ; Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:49:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kamikaze@bsdforen.de) Received: from mobileKamikaze.norad (nat-wh-1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de [129.13.72.169]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.bsdforen.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id A328C405493; Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:49:57 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <47BD1F14.9030903@bsdforen.de> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:49:56 +0100 From: Dominic Fandrey User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (X11/20080205) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Kevin Monceaux References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 06:49:59 -0000 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) All this is not necessary. Just set the encoding in "/etc/login.conf" and run cap_mkdb on it afterwards. This is from my login.conf: :charset=UTF-8:\ :lang=en_GB.UTF-8:\ You can also set this on a per-user basis in the file "~/.login_conf". It won't work for the console, but in a terminal emulator (I prefer rxvt-unicode, but uxterm should also work.) it works fine. My FreeBSD system uses UTF-8 and I never encountered problems because of this. You just have to remember to mount fat devices with "-L $LANG". The only thing to take care of is that the machine you're SSHing from uses the same charset.