Re: [tlug] Charset Problem?

[Matt Gushee <mgushee@example.com>]

On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 10:41:24AM +0800, Adonnis A. Enriquez wrote:
> Does anyone encounter this problem:
>    Netscape menu's and other component is not readable because
> all text are drawn in box( only small boxes). Example, the File menu
> is written as four small boxes.

Yes, I've had that problem. I think what's going on is something like:
in an attempt to bring Linux up to speed with the I18N thing, XFree86
now offers Unicode-encoded fonts. But at this stage of the game, most of
the fonts available are really just the same old localized fonts with
their glyph indices scrambled to fit the Unicode scheme. And depending
on ... ummm, something, these Unicodized fonts may appear first in the
catalog, but certain applications can't handle them.

>    I try changing Locale Charset setting at Mandrake Control Central to 
> ISO10646-1 and nothing happens.

That's probably not going to work. I suspect Unicode locales aren't
fully implemented yet. Better to stick with your conventional, localized
locale and manipulate the font settings to match. My brute-force
solution was to simply go into the 'fonts.dir' files* in all my font
directories and delete all the iso10646 entries. Note that the first
line of a 'fonts.dir' file is a count of the font descriptors in the
file (which is normally equal to the number of lines in the file, minus
the first line), so if you manually delete stuff you also have to
manually adjust that number.

There may be a way to keep iso10646-encoded fonts available but force
applications to grab iso8859-1 (or whatever) versions first, but I don't
know how. If you find out, please post your solution to the list.

Too bad the whiners drove Steve Turnbull away. He probably could have
given you an authoritative answer. Anyway, I hope this helps.

* A fonts.dir file maps XLFDs (X Logical Font Descriptors) to actual
  font files. Normally, each font directory on your system will contain
  a 'fonts.dir'. An XLFD looks like this:

    -b&h-lucida-bold-i-normal-sans-12-120-75-75-p-79-iso8859-1

  X applications use XLFDs to request fonts from the font server (or
  from your X server, if you don't run a separate font server).

  And you know what? As I got the font listing from which to cut and
  paste the above example, I noticed that I now have iso10646-encoded
  fonts on my system, but I'm not having any trouble with them. As I 
  recall, I had the problem when I installed XFree86 4.0 on a machine
  running Debian 2.2 (Potato). I just recently upgraded this and another
  machine to Debian 2.3 (Woody). So why am I not having trouble with
  fonts? I dunno, maybe locale support in general is just less broken
  than it used to be.

-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, Colorado, USA
mgushee@example.com
http://www.havenrock.com/