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No Cyrillic symbols in KDE and Gnome Slackware 10

Hello,

I have a problem. I can't see cyrillic text in any application! In KDE 3.2.3 cyrillic symbols appear like boxes. In GNOME 2.6 a cyrillic symbol appears as two rectangles one upon another with numbers inside them?! What should I do to see cyrillic texts and symbols!? Please help guys.

Install the correct font and if necessary tell your apps where to find it.

Thanks, but which is the correct font? :( would the fonts from winxp work?

Why don't you try the cyrillic font packet from the x folder of the slackware distribution?

I did, I installed them when I installed slackware, I tried reinstalling them but still nothing happened :(

Use forume search more often.

There were a shitload of posts about this issue. Bellow is one of them.

Report

Quote:

1) write in /etc/rc.d/rc.font
-----------------------
setfont -v Cyr_a8x16
mapscrn koi2alt
for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6; do
echo -ne "\033(K" > /dev/tty$i
done
loadkeys ru-ms
-----------------------

2) write in /etc/profile.d/lang.sh
-----------------------
export LANG=ru_RU.KOI8-R
export LC_MESSAGES=C
export LC_NUMERIC=C
-----------------------

3) edit (find this three lines) /usr/share/locale/locale.alias
-----------------------
...
russian ru_RU.KOI8-R
ru ru_RU.KOI8-R
ru_RU ru_RU.KOI8-R
...
-----------------------

4) edit /etc/X11/xorg.con
-----------------------
...
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/
...
Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us,ru(winkeys)"
Option "XkbOptions" "grp:ctrl_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll"

Thanks I'll try it. I did search for similar threads in the forum but I didn't find something like this. Hope it works.

But will the KOI8-R encoding work? In my country windows-1251 is a standard, and iso8859-5 is almost a standard too, but i've never seen KOI8-R, anyway, who cares if it works. :)

Well, unfortunately this didn't help

You need the following packages:

cabextract-0.6

webfonts-1.0-i386-3d

That's it, I think.

Could you give me a link to these packages? I found the first one, but it is a archiving utility I think, for extracting windows .cab files. Why do I need it? About the other package I didn't find anything?!

plm, what user are you running as? root? some other? Slack is not the best cyrillic platform - strange things happen.
I had cyrillic show up as squares with numbers in them in KDE and pretty much everywhere while I ran as root (setting up, tweaking period) Then, I created a normal user and for that user, cyrillic works no problem.

Cyrillic support has been such a painful issue on many linux distros. I am hesitant to even start digging what actually happen. But... some wounds are made to be reopen...

Tasks:
1. Can you please post "Module" and "Files" section of your /etv/X11/xorg.conf
2. Tell me if you use default/root. Did you try cyrillic as new/normal user?

Install this pkg before you install webfonts:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/d...l.tgz?download

webfonts: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/d...l.tgz?download

This should be all you have to do. I did the default Slack 10 install (by just installing everything) I did no modifications to my kernel, and it worked for me.

Quote:

Originally posted by abxbx
Install this pkg before you install webfonts:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/d...l.tgz?download

This should be all you have to do. I did the default Slack 10 install (by just installing everything) I did no modifications to my kernel, and it worked for me.

Slack10 installs freetype 2.1.7 as part of X. It is invoked in the modules section of xorg.conf. If you install 2.1.4 from link above - you'll be downgrading.

Just do a "locate freetype" - assuming you have done "updatedb" before. Among other things you'll see
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/libfreetype.so

I am certain it is a settings issue. The webfonts wouldn't hurt though.

Also, plz, post xorg.conf sections I requested above so we can check them and go further.

Hey suslik,

Just thought I'd let you know I have the same issues, both as root and user, and that that solution posted above does indeed not work. Note that I didn't install the KDEI packages, so maybe plm didn't either and that's the problem. Or would that be unimportant?

-zsejk

Code:

Section "Module"



# This loads the DBE extension module.



    Load        "dbe"  # Double buffer extension



# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables

# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.

    SubSection  "extmod"

      Option    "omit xfree86-dga"  # don't initialise the DGA extension

    EndSubSection



# This loads the font modules

    Load        "type1"

    Load        "freetype"

    Load        "speedo"



# This loads the GLX module

    Load      "glx"



EndSection

Code:

Section "Files"



# The location of the RGB database.  Note, this is the name of the

# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db").  There is normally

# no need to change the default.



    RgbPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"



# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (which are concatenated together),

# as well as specifying multiple comma-separated entries in one FontPath

# command (or a combination of both methods)

#

# If you don't have a floating point coprocessor and emacs, Mosaic or other

# programs take long to start up, try moving the Type1 and Speedo directory

# to the end of this list (or comment them out).

#



    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/"



# ModulePath can be used to set a search path for the X server modules.

# The default path is shown here.



#    ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"



EndSection

(just posting those in case plm's are the same; save him some posting time :) )

xorg.conf

Code:

Section "Module"



# This loads the DBE extension module.



    Load        "dbe"  # Double buffer extension



# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables

# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.

    SubSection  "extmod"

      Option    "omit xfree86-dga"  # don't initialise the DGA extension

    EndSubSection



# This loads the Type1 and FreeType font modules

    Load        "type1"

    Load        "speedo"

    Load        "freetype"

#    Load        "xtt"



# This loads the GLX module

    Load      "glx"

# This loads the DRI module

#    Load      "dri"



EndSection

Code:

Section "Files"



# The location of the RGB database.  Note, this is the name of the

# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db").  There is normally

# no need to change the default.



    RgbPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"



# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (which are concatenated together),

# as well as specifying multiple comma-separated entries in one FontPath

# command (or a combination of both methods)

#

# If you don't have a floating point coprocessor and emacs, Mosaic or other

# programs take long to start up, try moving the Type1 and Speedo directory

# to the end of this list (or comment them out).

#



    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/iso8859-15/misc/"        #These are some fonts I installed (iso8859-15) but even with them it doesn't work

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/iso8859-15/75dpi/"        #These are some fonts I installed (iso8859-15) but even with them it doesn't work

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/windows-1251/misc/"    #These are some fonts I installed (windows-1251) but even with them it doesn't work

    FontPath  "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/windows-1251/75dpi/"  #These are some fonts I installed (windows-1251) but even with them it doesn't work



# The module search path.  The default path is shown here.



#    ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"



EndSection

There's no cyrillic as root and as a normal user. When I installed slackware I thought it installed the KDEI packages, but as it seems it didn't, so I installed them later, but it didn't help.
I could try to create a new user after all the fonts are installed to see if it has cyrillic.
As for the freetype

Code:

/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/fonts/libfreetype.so

Also I installed the webfonts and cabextract for them, but maybe I should restart X to see whether it will work.

Guys I have cyrillic! guess the webfonts helped. I'll look if there is cyrillic as root now. Thanks very much for the help! :) :) :)

I am glad webfonts worked for plm, that is usually all that is needed - a good font files, with the needed encoding.

zsejk,

Try "xfontsel" Play with the last 2 menus - rgstry and encdng. The combinations that produce cyrillic are either iso8859 - 5 or koi8 - r. (koi8-r - old soviet\russian cyrillic layout. It is sometimes easier to make cyrillic work on unix with that, than other encodings.)

When you select one of the two combinations, see if the sample text shows any cyrillic in it. Also check what fonts provide those characters by going to fndry menu.

Slack's major problem is that it doesn't have true, good cp-1251 ttf fonts. The unicode layer has to construct it from bits and pieces of koi8 (from misc fonts) and some other crap. That is where it fails often - you get boxes with numbers.

I didn't try webfonts yet, but if it, of any other external ttf file, contains true cp1251 encoding your comp wouldn't have so many probs rendering cyrillic at cp1251.

Try getting other fonts from windwows (preferably 2000, XP and up), like arial, times, courier. They have true unicode fonts.

Once installed, check in xfontsel again. If you see them there, but not in KDE, we need to look at KDE font "filter."

BTW: with all that hoopla about kewl, new Bitsream Verona - where the hell is the cyrillics?

You can get lots of fonts from here Warning: the sire is in Russian only and crashes Konqueror.

Howto get Cyrillic (and other) symbol in KDE Slackware 10

the slackware 10 installation fail the installation of more fonts in kde, to install the fonts do:

- insert and mount the slackware installation cd 2 (ex. mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom)
- install the kde language packages (ex. installpkg /mnt/cdrom/slackware/kdei/*.tgz)
- enter in the kde control panel and enter in the font installer tool
- if necessary restart kde

bye