Arch Linux

n0nr4nd0m

Member

Registered: 2015-01-05

Posts: 2

Polish letters in console, terminal and X

I am having trouble with my settings:  I need to be able to read and write Polish letters on the console, in my terminals and under X generally, but keep my system and program language in English.

As it is, pressing AltGr+L (for example) should give me the following Polish letter: ł - Instead, nothing happens (in the console, in terminals and even here in FF). The same goes for all the other Polish letters I want to use. They do not display properly on the console or terminal if I cat a file containing Polish letters. However, they display properly on webpages.

I've tried setting various environment variables, in various files, but have only managed to have programs such as vi change to Polish language, which is not what I want.

I am running Arch, with FVWM, zsh, terminus-font in the terminal, and have many different fonts installed besides.

$ pacman -Qs font | grep local
local/fontconfig 2.11.1-1
local/fontsproto 2.1.3-1
local/freetype2 2.5.5-1
local/gsfonts 20130917-1
local/libfontenc 1.1.2-1
local/libxfont 1.5.0-1
local/libxft 2.3.2-1
local/profont 1-4
local/terminus-font 4.39-1
local/ttf-bitstream-vera 1.10-10
local/ttf-cheapskate 2.0-9
local/ttf-dejavu 2.34-1
local/ttf-droid 20121017-4
local/ttf-freefont 20120503-3
local/ttf-liberation 2.00.1-4
local/xorg-bdftopcf 1.0.5-1 (xorg xorg-apps)
local/xorg-font-util 1.3.0-2 (xorg-fonts xorg)
local/xorg-font-utils 7.6-4
local/xorg-fonts-100dpi 1.0.3-2 (xorg)
local/xorg-fonts-75dpi 1.0.3-2 (xorg)
local/xorg-fonts-alias 1.0.3-1
local/xorg-fonts-encodings 1.0.4-4 (xorg-fonts xorg)
local/xorg-fonts-misc 1.0.3-2
local/xorg-fonts-type1 7.7-1
local/xorg-mkfontdir 1.0.7-2 (xorg xorg-apps)
local/xorg-mkfontscale 1.1.1-1 (xorg-apps xorg)

Here is what I have tried so far... And the current state of my system:

I have uncommented to relevant Polish entries in /etc/locale.gen and run locale-gen, and this is the result:

$ locale -a

C
POSIX
pl_PL
pl_PL.iso88592
pl_PL.utf8
polish

and just to be sure:

$ grep -v '#' /etc/locale.gen

pl_PL.UTF-8 UTF-8  
pl_PL ISO-8859-2

and current environment variables:

$ env | grep -E '(LC|LANG)'
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

So it seems to me that I should have an English language system (LANG) with Polish letters / characters, although I'm new to Linux, so I could well be wrong there. Am I missing some important variable? Where should it be set? On my BSD box everything worked great, and all my variables were set in my ~/.zshrc file.

I have also tried the suggestions in this thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=150949, in other words, I created /etc/locale.conf and wrote there: LANG="en_US.UTF-8" but this didn't work and it left me with error messages such as:

$ locale -a

locale: Cannot set LC_TYPE to default locale: No such file or directory.

I'm running out of ideas...

Last edited by n0nr4nd0m (2015-01-05 19:09:17)

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: Polish letters in console, terminal and X

Here is what I have:

[20:10:41][lucke@kingdom]% locale -a 
en_US.utf8
pl_PL.utf8
POSIX
[20:17:13][lucke@kingdom]% cat /etc/vconsole.conf
KEYMAP=colemak
FONT=lat2-16
[20:18:03][lucke@kingdom]% cat /etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Change colemak to pl in KEYMAP. Use "setxkbmap pl" to have a Polish keymap in X (or set it in X's config files).

-edit-

If it was not clear: enable en_US.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen and run "locale-gen".

Last edited by lucke (2015-01-05 19:24:33)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Polish letters in console, terminal and X

Follow the wiki and create a proper /etc/vconsole.conf and  /etc/locale.conf.
Post the output of 'localectl' and the ~/.xinitrc if you use it.

n0nr4nd0m

Member

Registered: 2015-01-05

Posts: 2

Re: Polish letters in console, terminal and X

If it was not clear: enable en_US.UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen and run "locale-gen".

Thank you, Lucke! I  hadn't thought that uncommenting English locales would enable me to type Polish characters. But I can now type Polish characters in FF!! ąśżźćłó etc...

$ locale -a
C
POSIX
en_GB
en_GB.iso88591
en_GB.utf8
pl_PL
pl_PL.iso88592
pl_PL.utf8
polish

However, I am still unable to use them or view them in the console or my xterm.

Follow the wiki and create a proper /etc/vconsole.conf and  /etc/locale.conf.
Post the output of 'localectl' and the ~/.xinitrc if you use it.

$ cat /etc/vconsole.conf
#
# /etc/vconsole.conf
#

KEYMAP=pl

FONT=lat2-16

$ localectl
   System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: pl
      X11 Layout: n/a

$ cat ~/.xinitrc
#!/bin/sh

#
# ~/.xinitrc
#

# set variables

# set wallpaper
feh --randomize --bg-fill $HOME/.wallpapers/*

# set keymap
setxkbmap pl

# swap L-CTRL and CAPS for greater pinky comfort.
xmodmap $HOME/.xmodmap

## Here we set session to "fvwm" as default.
session=${1:-fvwm}

case $session in
    # run conky and pipe into wmfs status bar (named "topbar") then execute wmfs
    as) exec awesome;;
    bspwm) exec bspwm;;
    catwm) exec catwm;;
    cinnamon) exec cinnamon-session;;
    cwm) exec cwm;;
    dwm) exec dwm;;
    e17) exec enlightenment_start;;
    ede) exec startede;;
    fb) exec startfluxbox;;
    fvwm) exec fvwm;;
    gnome) exec gnome-session;;
    gnome-classic) exec gnome-session --session=gnome-classic;;
    i3m) exec i3;;
    icewm) exec icewm-session;;
    jwm) exec jwm;;
    kde) exec startkde;;
    lxde) exec startlxde;;
    mate) exec mate-session;;
    mwm) exec monsterwm;;
    notion) exec notion;;
    ob) exec openbox-session;;
    pekwm) exec pekwm;;
    spectrwm) exec spectrwm;;
    wmfs) exec conky -c ~/.config/wmfs/conkybar.sh | while true; read line; do wmfs -c status "topbar $line"; done & exec wmfs;;
    wmii) exec wmii;;
    xfce) exec startxfce4;;
    xmonad) exec xmonad;;
    # No known session, try to run it as command
    *) exec $1;;                
esac

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Polish letters in console, terminal and X

$ cat /etc/vconsole.conf
FONT=ter-v16n
FONT_MAP=8859-2
KEYMAP=pl2

You can keep your FONT, but try my FONT_MAP and KEYMAP.

How exactly do you run xterm? Try running it as 'uxterm'.

thisoldman

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 1,172

Re: Polish letters in console, terminal and X

What is the font used in xterm?