[tlug] mutt 1.3.27 working w/ Japanese (almost) out-of-the-box

[Matt Gushee <mgushee@example.com>]

Hello TLUGers--

How's everything with the group? I don't know if anybody will remember me,
but I was a regular on this list a while back when I lived in Japan (I
was in Hokkaido, so I never made it to any physical meetings). Anyway, I
hope things are good.

Lately I've been trying to get back into using Japanese on Linux, and one
of the things I needed was a non-Emacs-based mail client. 
 
  [ Yes, it's true. I've gone over to the other side. Sorry, Turnbull-
    sensei. I've even become a (gasp) vim user! ]

So I thought this might be of interest to some of you. Apologies if you've
already heard about it -- I would have searched the list, but of course
searching is disabled.

Anyway, the news is that I've compiled a stock version (i.e., no local-
ization hacks) of mutt 1.3.27 and am now using it to read and write 
Japanese email. No extraordinary measures were needed -- I just had to
run 'configure' with

  --enable-locales-fix --without-wc-funcs

I run it in a KTerm, and if I set LANG=ja_JP it runs with a Japanese UI,
otherwise English. Either way Japanese text works fine. 

Of course, results may vary according to your distribution or by the
i18n/l10n packages you have installed. I'm running Debian 2.2, and have
installed locales, locale-ja, and i18ndata.
-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, Colorado, USA
mgushee@example.com
http://www.havenrock.com/