I have a problem with Fedora 9 - if I type in X, whether it is in a firefox window, a gaim window, an xterm, a gnome-terminal, a gvim window, it will randomly switch to some Unicode part of the character set. The text is still legible, however it is rendered wrong (with unnecessary space after each character). Besides being hard to read, it makes it impossible to program, and impossible to guarantee that the recipient of a message will have the ability to properly view the text. I have found no way to switch back, however on occasion it will do so randomly.
It resets back to normal if I close and re-open the window. Typing in a browser window is a simply terrible idea. I have taken to typing in a gvim window, and restarting gvim when the keyboard input switches. I have found no way to convert the text to the proper part of the character set, and cut-n-paste preserves the problem. I've also mitigated it somewhat by only using windows, not tabs, with firefox.
The real mistake was using Fedora 9 in the first place, but I had no idea how bad it would be - between problems like this that are impossible to troubleshoot, and an X server that won't listen on TCP without me making source changes. While the quality of Fedora 9 has made it clear to me that I should never use Fedora again, I still am stuck using it for a few days.
This is how it looks after getting in that state. You see how much Iwas able to type until the problem reoccurred. And this time, I was lucky that it went back to normal quite quickly. A capital T is, in hex, ef bc b4.
I'm disappointed that Fedora is becoming less usable with each release. At work we're a RedHat customer, and if Fedora is really the beta(or even alpha) test for RedHat, I'm quite concerned for the future of Linux in the enterprise. Still, I'm going to not personally worry about this, and switch to Ubuntu soon.
Carlo Nyto wrote:
I have a problem with Fedora 9 - if I type in X, whether it is in a firefox window, a gaim window, an xterm, a gnome-terminal, a gvim window, it will randomly switch to some Unicode part of the character set.
It looks to me like the problem is that you're /not/ using a UTF-8 locale. Can you confirm that? Open a terminal and run:
$ set | egrep '^(LANG|LC)'
I think you should be using LANG="ja_JP.UTF-8"
I have found no way to convert the text to the proper part of the character set, and cut-n-paste preserves the problem.
I can tell you how to change the encoding of a file, but I'm not aware of any program that can shift characters to different unicode points. The problem isn't that the system is displaying your characters badly, it's that the characters are being entered as fullwidth latin characters rather than regular ascii. They look similar when printed, but they're not the same unicode characters.
The real mistake was using Fedora 9 in the first place, but I had no idea how bad it would be - between problems like this that are impossible to troubleshoot,
It's not impossible...
and an X server that won't listen on TCP without me making source changes.
GDM is responsible for instructing X not to listen on TCP, and you'll find it used in other distributions of the same age. That problem isn't specific to Fedora.
Still, I'm going to not personally worry about this, and switch to Ubuntu soon.
Ubuntu uses the same gdm, the same X server, and the same input methods that Fedora does. I don't think switching distributions will get you as far as configuring the system properly will.
2008/11/7 Gordon Messmer yinyang@eburg.com:
Carlo Nyto wrote:
I have a problem with Fedora 9 - if I type in X, whether it is in a firefox window, a gaim window, an xterm, a gnome-terminal, a gvim window, it will randomly switch to some Unicode part of the character set.
It looks to me like the problem is that you're /not/ using a UTF-8 locale. Can you confirm that? Open a terminal and run:
$ set | egrep '^(LANG|LC)'
power:~$ env|egrep '^(LANG|LC)' LANG=en_US.utf8 power:~$ cat /etc/sysconfig/i18n LANG="en_US.UTF-8" SYSFONT="latarcyrheb-sun16"
And I have used UTF-8 locales on most versions of Fedora since it was released. I am forced to use LANG=C on RedHat servers at work, due to slowdowns in common utilities like wc by several orders of magnitude. (Quite embarassing when I upgrade a system and a shell script takes more than ten thousand times longer to run). But no one is using the X server on these systems.
I think you should be using LANG="ja_JP.UTF-8"
You think my problem is because I have it set to Japanese, or that I should change it to Japanese to get proper English text?
I have found no way to convert the text to the proper part of the character set, and cut-n-paste preserves the problem.
I can tell you how to change the encoding of a file, but I'm not aware of any program that can shift characters to different unicode points. The problem isn't that the system is displaying your characters badly, it's that the characters are being entered as fullwidth latin characters rather than regular ascii. They look similar when printed, but they're not the same unicode characters.
I agree this conversion would be a very difficult - perhaps impossible - problem to solve. Do you mean "fullwidth" as in a multi-byte UTF-8 character? That is in fact my problem. The fact that they are rendered incorrectly means that I can't ignore it for certain cases like an email. But if they weren't rendered incorrectly (double-wide, which makes me wonder if "fullwidth" implies that meaning here), I would be in much bigger trouble, because I wouldn't notice when it switches. This would be disasterous for passwords, programming, and filenames.
The real mistake was using Fedora 9 in the first place, but I had no idea how bad it would be - between problems like this that are impossible to troubleshoot,
It's not impossible...
No luck and no starting points so far.
and an X server that won't listen on TCP without me making source changes.
GDM is responsible for instructing X not to listen on TCP, and you'll find it used in other distributions of the same age. That problem isn't specific to Fedora.
Unfortunately Fedora chose to ship a version of GDM that no longer allows the "-nolisten tcp" option to the X server to be disabled through a configuration file. This is the first version of GDM has not been able to do this. No other distribution chose to ship such a thorougly broken version of GDM. Fedora has the ability to refuse to use a new upstream version, is certainly not afraid to ship patches for things like this. Do you know of another distribution that ships this broken version of GDM?
Still, I'm going to not personally worry about this, and switch to Ubuntu soon.
Ubuntu uses the same gdm, the same X server, and the same input methods that Fedora does. I don't think switching distributions will get you as far as configuring the system properly will.
Except no one has advised how to configure the system properly, or how to find what conifiguration options wold be relevant. Nowhere is this mentioned in any documentation.
In Ubuntu, not only do I get a default configuration that works, but the configuration files are still in their proper place and are honored.
Carlo Nyto wrote:
2008/11/7 Gordon Messmer yinyang@eburg.com:
I think you should be using LANG="ja_JP.UTF-8"
You think my problem is because I have it set to Japanese, or that I should change it to Japanese to get proper English text?
I think you have *something* set to use Japanese locale. Your messages come through with these MIME headers:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Your messages aren't UTF-8 at all. They're sent in a completely different encoding, and a Japanese character set. That's probably a setting in your browser. If you're using Firefox, check View menu -> Character encoding.
But if LANG isn't set to a Japanese locale, and none of the LC_ variables are set, I'm not sure where else to look. If you're using GNOME, you can try System -> Preferences -> Personal -> Input Method, and see if an input method is enabled. You could also check System -> Preferences -> Hardware -> Keyboard -> Layouts (Tab) and see how your keyboard layout is set.
I can tell you how to change the encoding of a file, but I'm not aware of any program that can shift characters to different unicode points. The problem isn't that the system is displaying your characters badly, it's that the characters are being entered as fullwidth latin characters rather than regular ascii. They look similar when printed, but they're not the same unicode characters.
I agree this conversion would be a very difficult - perhaps impossible
- problem to solve. Do you mean "fullwidth" as in a multi-byte UTF-8
character?
Not at all. I mean that there is a Unicode character called "Fullwidth Latin capital letter T" which is an entirely different character (it's codepoint FF34) than the standard latin capital letter "T" (codepoint 0054, and ascii hex value 54).
That is in fact my problem. The fact that they are rendered incorrectly
Technically, they're rendered correctly. The problem is not rendering, but input. The characters are being input in the wrong locale.