FreeBSD and accented characters

J

Juh924

Hello everybody,

First of all I'm a completely new user in FreeBSD. (And I've also never used Linux before). So here is my problem: It concerns the French accents on the FreeBSD console. I didn't know where else I could post this message because it doesn't concern directly X.

Here are the changes I made:

/etc/rc.conf:
Code: 
font8x8=iso15-font8x8
font8x14=iso15-font8x14
font8x16=iso15-font8x16

/etc/login.conf in the default section, I added:
Code: 
:charset=UTF-8:\
:lang=en_US.UTF-8:
and then:
[CMD="sudo cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf"][/CMD]

I use hal for X, and everything is configured according to the FreeBSD handbook, using UTF-8. I also use the NVIDIA driver so I did make sure that no "keyboard lines" weren't commented in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Ok, so I rebooted the system just to make sure everything was launched correctly. The accented characters are working fine in the login screen.
-> However, once logged, they don't work anymore. I started X to see how it was, and it worked very well. On awesome, on Firefox title bar, accented characters were also displayed. (and even in the CTRL+R window (to start programs in awesome wm) )

Here is a second attempt to make it work on X AND in the console:

/etc/login.conf in the default section, I added:
Code: 
:charset=UTF-8:\
:lang=en_US.ISO-8859-15:
and then:
[CMD="sudo cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf"][/CMD]

Then accented characters were working in the console. However, when starting X the Firefox title bar couldn't display accented characters anymore but some strange letters such as ... well I can't write it but it couldn't display the "éèà" etc.

Do you have any ideas to make this work? (I'd like to keep the en_US version by the way.)

Thank you very much,

PS: I tested a lot of combinations after searching on the internet, without success.
 
You can try the following:

[cmd=]export LANG=<LANG_WHICH_HAS_ACCENTED_CHARS>.UTF-8[/cmd]
and then from the same console start firefox.

Sometimes localization is pretty fu&&ed up, if it is not for US people xD
 
Thanks very much.

I tried this solution but it's still not working.

What I don't understand is that:

* In console mode, with the ISO8859-15, accented characters are displayed correctly.
* In X mode, with ISO8859-15 or UTF-8 in .../hal/fdi/policy/x11-input, accented characters work everywhere except in the Firefox title-bar and in the awesome wm "Run" command.
* When using UTF-8 in /etc/login.conf, EVERYTHING (even Firefox title bar and awesome wm run command) is working fine in X mode, except accented characters in console mode.

=> So why when using anything but UTF-8 in /etc/login.conf, there is a problem in the Firefox title bar and in the awesome wm Run command only?

I really can't figure it out, even after reading the handbook. If there are some French members, could you please tell me exactly how you did it?

Thank you very much.
 
Hi,
In your /etc/login_conf, I suppose you could change

Code: 
:lang=en_US.ISO-8859-15:

to

Code: 
:lang=fr_FR.ISO-8859-15:
 
Hi, thanks.

I already tried this. However I'd like to keep FreeBSD in English. But anyway, where there is ISO8859-15, everything works fine except in X mode, using firefox. When using UTF-8 (no matter what language is used), everything works fine in X mode, even firefox title bar. But in console mode, the "é" displays a /351. And I really can't understand why.

I forgot to mention something: when configured with UTF-8, when typing accented characters in Awesome wm Run command, even if everything appears correctly in X mode, here is what appears in the console:

Code: 
W: awesome: draw_text_context_init:nnn: cannot parse pango markup: Error on line n char nn: Invalid UTF-8 encoded text in name
n = numbers I don't remember.

Thanks a lot for your help.
 
Hello,

Well, I've just discovered that Firefox title bar and Awesome WM Run command aren't the only problem I have. The vi editor doesn't display the accented characters either.

Here is what I have in vi when typing
Code: 
" é ": \xc3\xa9

Here we go:

[CMD=]locale[/cmd]
Code: 
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Here are all the modifications I made:

In /usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/policy/x11-input.fdi:
I did a copy/paste from FreeBSD handbook, using UTF-8 encoding. (without copying the line with "pc102" as I'm on a laptop.)

In /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
I deleted all the lines referring to the keyboard, lines that were added by nvidia-settings command.

In /etc/rc.conf:
Code: 
keymap="fr.iso.acc"
font8x8="iso15-8x8"
font8x14="iso15-8x14"
font8x16="iso15-8x16"
hald_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"

In /etc/login.conf:
Code: 
default: \
...
...
...
:charset=UTF-8: \
:lang=en_US.UTF-8:

From here, accented characters are displayed everywhere in X mode (xterm, firefox, firefox title bar, Awesome WM Run command), except when using vi editor.

In console mode, accented characters aren't displayed at all. Instead of the "é", there is a /351.

I don't know how to post the output of the console, so if somebody could help me out, thank you. (Is there a command like dmesg to print the output of the console in the X mode?)

As UTF-8 isn't supported by the console, I tried to change the /etc/login.conf as follows:
Code: 
default: \
...
...
...
:charset=UTF-8: \
:lang=en_US.ISO8859-15:

Now, in console mode, accented characters are working fine. In X mode, accented characters are also displayed in Firefox, xterm, vi editor EXCEPT on the Firefox title bar, and in the Awesome WM Run command.

Even when using fr_FR.UTF-8 or fr_FR.ISO8859-15, the problem is still the same.

Thanks a lot for your help.

PS: the space between : and \ is to avoid FreeBSD smiley and is not an error.
 
I forgot something:
When lang=en_US.ISO8859 in /etc/login.conf, the output of [CMD=">"]locale[/CMD] is the same as before, except that instead of UTF-8 there is ISO8859-15.
 
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