I edited /etc/sddm.conf with kate on openSUSE leap42.1, adding some parameters. Everything looked alright, in particular I could read what I was entering...

Those new parameters didn't work. So I went back and opened /etc/sddm.conf with kate again -- getting a message, that kate had opened the file with UTF8 encoding but there were characters contained with a different encoding and alright, anything I had entered showed up as chinese(?). I tried it with cat, kwrite and vim, they all confirmed chinese(?) entries.

So, how / why could this happen? (How) Can I re-convert my entries to UTF8? And to add to this confusion, /etc/sddm.conf looks now (one evening later) like this

...all chinese(?) characters gone. What the...

are you SURE that they are now in Chinese pictographs
-- the above line in traditional

Korean is very different in looks
reset your language

or

is it the normal ascii block that looks like a domino's tile

No it is not Korean, but certainly asian. I'm not an expert there, I don't know which language they really belong to, they just looked like chinese (your first example) or japanese (kanji).

How do I "reset my language"?

It is (was) definitely not smeared ascii.

I tried also editing under windows both with word and the little text editor. No luck. I typed it into a newly opened document in windows (the whole shebang in sddm.conf). No luck again. I used dos2unix on the files. Still no luck. I filed a bug in april on openSUSE's bugzilla. No reaction either. I guess sddm not only reads but also alters sddm.conf, but that is way over my head to solve.

*sigh*

Really nobody with an idea how to circumvent this?

as above i asked is it really Chinese "simple" or "traditional "
or
like this " ⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲⛲ "
like a domino tile

for the domino tiles it is a missing language

this is my "sddm.conf"

Ah, my error. But how do I discern simple from traditional Chinese?

It is definitely not like this, there are different symbols of an asian (Chinese, Japanese,...) origin. And Kate is set to UTF8.

Thanks for this example, I changed MinimumUid=0 (not 1000) and added system daemons to HideUsers=at,avahi... and then the problems start.

Just noticing: is MinimumUid=0 too low? What number is root? But still, this should not create symbols of another language.

root is 500 or 1000
i dual boot with scientificlinux so both are set to 1000

Okay, jut to test for buffer-underrun or some such I set MinimumUid=1 -- same problem.

New is, that after logging in with the edited sddm.conf I get a mixture of asian characters, symbols and latin letters. I try to copy that as an example from the console:
I hope this will be displayed in your browser as in mine -- firefox shows it "correct".

try using 500 or 1000 as the min
root IS the very first user so

and system processes use lower id's

systemd is uuid 1

I'm trying to enable graphical login for root -- without the whole bunch of daemons cluttering the login window. That is what HideUsers should do...

that will CAUSE problems

kdm blocks that

i take it you are using plasma 5

there is NO text login option any more ( kde4 did have that )
but you can change the target to do a text only boot
then login as root in the terminal and then run "startx " or "kdm"

It won't. I do that for more than 16 years with never any problem -- and I know the discussion about how dangerous it is deemed. Funny as it seems, I know what I do and why .

No, it won't do that -- since it isn't running anymore, it is sddm now.

Yes.

Not necessary. I can already log in as root in graphic mode, it is just that big bunch of daemons bothering me in the login panel, which I want to suppress with the HideUsers= parameter. Doing that results in the problem.