[tlug] Re: locales

[Mike Fabian <mfabian@example.com>]

David Eduardo Gomez Noguera <davidgn@example.com> writes:

> On Tue, 2002-04-16 at 13:19, Mike Fabian wrote:
>> David Eduardo Gomez Noguera <davidgn@example.com> writes:
>> 
>> > On Mon, 2002-04-15 at 07:12, Mike Fabian wrote:
>> >> David Eduardo Gomez Noguera <davidgn@example.com> writes:
>> >> 
>> >> > Anyone know an utf8 locale that would let me use kinput to input
>> >> > japanese, and input other normal characters when not?
>> >> 
>> >> LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8
>> >> 
>> >> can be used to input Japanese via kinput2 and English as usual.
>> >> 
>> >> > Also, what X version would i need?
>> >> 
>> >> XFree86 4.2.0, there were some problems in XFree86 4.1.0 which
>> >> made kinput2 not work in ja_JP.UTF-8 locale. 
>> >> 
>> >> > And if you know if gnome works with it, would be great.
>> >> 
>> >
>> > Thank you. I think it worked, now i dont know what font to use.
>> > seems like i have no unicode japanese fonts. know where are anyone? i
>> > just see squares, even where i type.日本語.
>> 
>> What application are you trying to type in?
>> 
>> Can you give a few more details? Name of the application, version, ...
>
> gnome apps.
> mainly, those i use the most, evolution, nautilus and galeon.
> no text editor because there is none good enough yet.

I tried galeon-1.0.3 and

    LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8 galeon

works for me. 

>> > I have Cyberbit bitstream, but it seems like its "config files" doesnt
>> > know it has japanese fonts too.

The fonts which galeon uses for the menus, toolbars, widgets in the
toolbars etc are setup in gtkrc. If you don't have your own ~/.gtkrc,
one of the global files in /etc/gtk is used. Which one depends on
the language you use. You can check yourself with 

     LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8 strace -eopen galeon

If you want to make sure a certain font like the bitstream cyberbit is
used for iso10646-1, you can specify the font in your own ~/.gtkrc, for
example you can put the following in your ~/.gtkrc:

style "gtk-default" {
#       fontset = "-efont-biwidth-medium-r-normal--16-160-75-75-p-80-iso10646-1,-*-*-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-c-*-*-*"
       fontset = "-bitstream-bitstream cyberbit-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-p-*-iso10646-1,-*-*-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-c-*-*-*"
#       fontset = "-monotype-arial unicode ms-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-p-*-iso10646-1,-*-*-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-c-*-*-*"
#       fontset = "-gnu-unifont-medium-r-normal--16-160-75-75-c-80-iso10646-1,-*-*-medium-r-normal--16-*-*-*-c-*-*-*"
}
class "GtkWidget" style "gtk-default"

Screen shots using the above ~/.gtkrc with one of the lines made
active by removing the comment char:

http://www.suse.de/~mfabian/screenshots/galeon-bitstream-cyberbit-utf-8.png
http://www.suse.de/~mfabian/screenshots/galeon-ms-arial-unicode-utf-8.png
http://www.suse.de/~mfabian/screenshots/galeon-efont-biwidth-utf-8.png
http://www.suse.de/~mfabian/screenshots/galeon-gnu-unifont-utf-8.png

You can see that it works.

Using the TrueType fonts 'Bitstream Cyberbit' or 'MS Arial Unicode'
here makes the startup of galeon *very* slow because XFree86 renders
all glyphs of a *proportional* TrueType font when opening it.  These
fonts are proportional (the '-p-' in the XLFD) and they are
huge. Unless you are using a fontserver, the whole X-server will hang
while galeon is starting. On a slow machine this might take a minute.

On top of that the Bitstream Cyberbit font looks unbearably ugly.

MS Arial Unicode looks reasonably good, but same as with the Bitstream
Cyberbit there is a problem with the spacing in the entry widget of
Google. I don't know why.

The Unicode bitmap fonts 'efont-unicode' and 'gnu-unifont' load quite
fast and produce quite good results.

-- 
Mike Fabian   <mfabian@example.com>   http://www.suse.de/~mfabian
睡眠不足はいい仕事の敵だ。