[tlug] Japanese fonts in VIM

[Matt Gushee <mgushee@example.com>]

Well, here I am again, trying to get all my Japanese stuff working.

I am having a problem with Japanese fonts in GVIM. Basically, they are
invisible. Console VIM in a KTerm works okay, but I really prefer GVIM
for any extended editing sessions.

Here's how it goes: I set LANG=ja_JP (or ja_JP.EUC-JP, and yes, that is
definitely a valid locale name on my system), start kinput2 with

  $ kinput2 -canna &

and fire up GVIM, and ...

The menu appears in Japanese.
I can invoke kinput2 by the usual means (Shift-Space) ...
and input Japanese text (I've verified this by saving the file and
viewing it in JVIM in a KTerm).

But when I set the font to anything with a jisx-0208.1983-0 encoding, it
appears that VIM uses the specified font--at least, the window and
cursor size seem to vary predictably in relation to the font metrics.
And yet, the characters that should appear in the editing buffer and the
command line are simply invisible. 

I've tried varying the color scheme and using a number of different
fonts, but the results are always the same: I can type Japanese
characters, but I can't see them.

Version info:

  OS:  Debian GNU/Linux 3.0
  GTK: 1.2
  VIM: 6.0.48, compiled from Debian source package with no configuration
       changes (but I've checked the build rules, and multibyte support
       seems to be turned on).

Any idea what's going on here?

-- 
Matt Gushee                 When a nation follows the Way,
Englewood, Colorado, USA    Horses bear manure through
mgushee@example.com           its fields;
http://www.havenrock.com/   When a nation ignores the Way,
                            Horses bear soldiers through
                                its streets.
                                
                            --Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)