LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Midnight Commander, F-keys, UTF-8 and ASCII characters not showing correctly

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Midnight Commander, F-keys, UTF-8 and ASCII characters not showing correctly

I'm pretty sure this is something I've not get set right in my environment variables but I'll be blasted if I know what I'm missing.

When I launch MC (yes I still use MC) from command line or anything that uses the ASCII codes for drawing lines and right angles they come out with:
'q' for the vertical line
'x' horizontal lines
'j,k,l,m' for the right angles

Code:

qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq.[^]>kl<q ~ 

qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq.[^]>kx'n                        Name                          x Size  xModify time 

xx'n                        Name                                              x Size  xModify time xx/..                                                      xUP--DIRxOct  3 

14:42xx/..                                                                      xUP--DIRxSep 18 16:01xx .directory                                              x    

48xSep  2 18:00xx/.AbiSuite                                                    x  4096xApr  1  2012xx Achafexp.ttf                                            

x  60544xAug 23  2000xx/.BitchX                                                x  4096xAug 21 18:55xx Achafita.ttf                                            

x  61676xAug 23  2000xx/.Eterm                                                  x  4096xMar 15  2012xx Achaflft.ttf                                            

x  61016xAug 23  2000xx/.adobe                                                  x  4096xJan 31  2011xx Achafont.ttf                                            

x  59760xAug 23  2000xx/.audacity-data                                          x  4096xMar  8  2011xx Achafout.ttf                                            

x 118260xAug 23  2000xx/.blackbox                                              x  4096xSep 11 18:39xx Achafsex.ttf                                            

x  61548xAug 23  2000xx/.cache                                                  x  4096xOct  9 18:22xx AtomicAge-Regular.ttf                                  

x  31048xAug 28 12:59xx/.centerim                                              x  4096xJun 28  2011xx Boogaloo-Regular.ttf                                    

x  33928xAug 28 12:59xx/.config                                                x  4096xOct  2 12:04xx Cardinal-Alternate.ttf                                  

x  50948xAug 27  2003xx/.dbus                                                  x  4096xJan 31  2011x

I also have to use 'esc+number' to get the function keys from F1-F9 to work in the application, but F10 works just fine.

When I launch into fluxbox and go into xterm/rxvt/terminal everything works just peachy.

In lilo.conf I have

Code:

append = "vt.default_utf8=1"

When I run setconsolefont any font that is selects show the same kind of anomaly with no ASCII lines just letters in their place.

Here are my 'set' configuration
<snip>

Code:

tcsh    6.18.01

term    xterm

tty    pts/2

uid    1000

user    kage

version tcsh 6.18.01 (Astron) 2012-02-14 (i686-intel-linux) options wide,nls,dl,al,kan,rh,filec

visiblebell

mc --version =

GNU Midnight Commander 4.8.4
Built with GLib 2.32.4
Using the S-Lang library with terminfo database
With builtin Editor
With subshell support as default
With support for background operations
With mouse support on xterm and Linux console
With support for X11 events
With internationalization support
With multiple codepages support
Virtual File Systems: cpiofs, tarfs, sfs, extfs, ftpfs, fish, smbfs
Data types: char: 8; int: 32; long: 32; void *: 32; size_t: 32; off_t: 64;
Any ideas?

I use mc too. In fact, it's the only file manager I use. I had the same issue when I was trying to set up my greek locales correctly. So I believe it's locale related. Do unicode characters display correctly on your terminal? Eg localized filenames with ls ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by segmentation_fault (Post 4804241)

If I'm following correctly, here is an example "'ls' of my backups"

Code:

 12M -rw-r--r--  1 evil root  12M Oct 12 02:03 etc.tar.bz

 16G -rw-r--r--  1 evil root  16G Oct  7 06:10 home.tar.bz

 66M -rw-r--r--  1 evil root  66M Oct 12 02:03 usrlocal.tar.bz

 96K -rw-------  1 evil root  95K Oct 12 00:00 webmin-config

If I didn't answer this right, my apologies preemptively.

I was asking if you can see locale characters on your terminal, eg greek, spanish, chinese or whatever your locale is set to. If not, then your locale is not set up properly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by segmentation_fault (Post 4804486)

I was asking if you can see locale characters on your terminal, eg greek, spanish, chinese or whatever your locale is set to. If not, then your locale is not set up properly.

Thank you for the assist, I checked out my LOCALE and it was set to 'en_US' which is correct, but it got me thinking about some other settings, so I set "vt.default_utf8=0" and changed my TERM settings from "xterm" to "linux" this seems to have fixed it.

It's good you worked it out! As for the locale settings, if you want to check it further, mine are set to en_US.UTF_8 and my /etc/conf.d/consolefont has

Code:

consolefont="iso07u-16"

consoletranslation="8859-7_to_uni"

unicodemap="iso07u"

but as long as vt.default_utf8=0 works I believe you are ok.

Quote:

Originally Posted by segmentation_fault (Post 4805956)

It's good you worked it out! As for the locale settings, if you want to check it further, mine are set to en_US.UTF_8 and my /etc/conf.d/consolefont has

Code:

consolefont="iso07u-16"

consoletranslation="8859-7_to_uni"

unicodemap="iso07u"

but as long as vt.default_utf8=0 works I believe you are ok.

I will check this for sure, thanks!

I have the same problems, but quite specific:
there is no UTF-8 support in MC's internal viewer and editor, while, for example, cat file.ext displays text correctly in Konsole (KDE 4.9.5).

To add another edge of the problem - all this is happening in VirtualBox (4.2.6) VM, on physical hardware with the same config I have no problems.