Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

humilleitor · 2011-07-13 03:42:05

I hope the title of this post is self explanatory. I'll give some more details.

When I run gdm, if I chose the Xfce session, then the terminal programs I have in my system (namely xfce-terminal and lxterminal) don't output non-ascii characters. So, I can't get accents things like: "á é í ó ú ñ" and so on. BUT: with the rest of the applications I have no problem. For example I can write anything in Notepad, or in my browser (with which I'm typing this), etc. And EVEN I can type non-ascii characters in the different options of the menubar in the terminal programs (for example, I open a terminal, I click in the menubar-->Terminal-->Set title, and then I can write a title like "España". But I can't type "España" into the terminal window. Instead of the "ñ", I get a question mark, like this: "Espa?a".

However, if I chose the LXDE session, then I can type and output non-ascii characters, same in lxterminal or in xfce-terminal, and I don't have any problem at all.

Of course, in text mode (Ctrl+Alt+F1...) I can also type non-ascii.

Does anybody have a clue about why this is happening?

Thank you.

Stebalien · 2011-07-13 04:49:44

Put the following in one of your login scripts (/etc/profile, ~/.xinitrc, ...):

export LANG="<your language>.UTF-8"

humilleitor · 2011-07-13 13:02:33

I've just tried that, but it doesn't make any difference. Actually, I have "en_US.UTF-8" as system default, and "es" as keyboard default, and I type non-ascii characters everywhere _except_ in terminal emulators within Xfce session.

Leonid.I · 2011-07-13 14:17:11

Maybe irrelevant, but can you paste that Espa\tilde{n}a into terminal?

humilleitor · 2011-07-13 16:30:00

As all the characters in the string:"\tilde{n}" are ascii, obviously when I type them I get them output exactly as I typed them.

Another relevant pieces of information:

1.- in my other OS (Debian), where I also have Xfce as a desktop manager, I don't experiene this issue. Only in Arch.

2.- in the Arch-Xfce-terminal emulators scenario, xterm works well (while Xfce-terminal and lxterminal don't).

3.- if I create a brand new user for testing purposes, I still experience the issue. HOWEVER: if I login as root, Xfce-terminal and lxterminal work as expected.

4,- Setting the keyboard layout in the Settings Manager-->Keyboard doesn't make any difference: whether I leave the system defaults, or I setup a Spanish keyboard, the result is the same: still no "ñ" nor "€" in the mentioned terminal emulators.

WTF???????

Last edited by humilleitor (2011-07-13 17:23:41)

R00KIE · 2011-07-13 18:53:30

What's the output of 'locale'?

humilleitor · 2011-07-13 22:42:01

This is my locale output. I have my OS in English because I don't want crappy translations into Spanish. But my keyboard layout is Spanish. And, I repeat, everything works perfectly well with this locale setup except that in Xfce a couple of terminal emulators refuse to output non-ascii characters. Do you have some suggestion?

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

R00KIE · 2011-07-14 09:01:31

Hmmm then what's the output of 'setxkbmap -query'?
So far your setup looks fine, try starting the xfce session with startx instead of using a login manager and see if anything changes.

humilleitor · 2011-07-14 17:21:51

Rookie: the 'setxkbmap -query' outputs:

rules: evdev
model: evdev
layout: es

So, I've done what you suggest, and I think we're narrowing down a bit the problem: if I start X with xinit and then run xfce4-session, the terminal emulators work as expected: I get non-ascii characters. Even if I start X with a login manager different from gdm (this time I've used lxdm), they also work as expected.
So, the problem seems to be in gdm. But where?

Just in case it's of any use for debugging, I'm posting here the contents of the /var/log/gdm/0-greeter.log file, which shows some errors, though they don't seem to be related with this issue (but I'm not sure, as I'm not an expert):

gnome-session[2462]: WARNING: Failed to start app: Unable to start application: Failed to execute child process "gnome-power-manager" (No such file or directory)
** (process:2474): DEBUG: Greeter session pid=2474 display=:0 xauthority=/var/run/gdm/auth-for-gdm-5dIOMr/database
Failed to play sound: File or data not found
gdm-simple-greeter[2474]: Gtk-WARNING: gtkwidget.c:6794: widget not within a GtkWindow
gdm-simple-greeter[2474]: WARNING: Unable to read from file /etc/arch-release
gdm-simple-greeter[2474]: Gtk-WARNING: gtk_widget_size_allocate(): attempt to allocate widget with width -47 and height -47
g_dbus_connection_real_closed: Remote peer vanished with error: Underlying GIOStream returned 0 bytes on an async read (g-io-error-quark, 0). Exiting.

Does this new information tell something to you?

R00KIE · 2011-07-14 18:43:35

This is the point where my knowledge ends as I don't use any login manager and I never had to deal with a problem like yours.
If the output of 'setxkbmap -query' was obtained when using gdm then I have no idea whatsoever of what can be wrong as that seems to be as it should be. Try looking in the wiki and searching the forums for similar problems if you haven't done so yet.

humilleitor · 2011-07-16 13:08:23

Yes, I got that output using gdm.
I tried to google this issue before posting here, but as I didn't find anything, that's why I decided to post: after all, it's an issue I'm only experiencing in Arch.

Anyhow, I finally got rid of the problem (I can't say I solved it) by using brute force, wiping many of my config files, totally uninstalling Xfce and some other packages related, and then installing it again. Now terminal emulators work as they should.

Thanks for the interest, though.

arch_art · 2011-07-25 16:56:14

I'm having the same problem. Some asked if it is possible to past a ñ in the terminal, the answer is no...
a ? appears instead of ñ.

locale output is

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

In xterm ñ can be used without problems.
I reinstalled the terminal package, and xfce4 meta package with no results.

Can someone suggest some steps to understand what is happening?

thanks

JLucien · 2011-08-05 16:33:08

I am having the same problem and have posted in the xfce forum - posted here

I have alleviated half of the problem by changing my login manager to slim from gdm, but xfce doesn't recognise files as utf-8 unless they are specifically opened and saved that way. This is not the case for GNOME3.

noneatall · 2011-11-09 12:06:25

Having the same problem, I did a "find /usr/ -perm 700" and found that /usr/lib/locale was root-only. I used a script to mod all dirs 755 and all files 744. Now it works

humilleitor · 2011-11-09 14:22:10

That's a good piece of news.

marioalexis · 2016-12-20 03:52:04

I had exactly the same problem with lxterminal.
Uncomment the lines what you want to use in "/etc/locale.gen" file, and load them with locale-gen command. Then restart the terminal.
In this case is sufficient to set LANG=en_US.UTF-8 in "/etc/locale.conf" and uncomment the en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 line in "/etc/locale.gen"

Last edited by marioalexis (2016-12-20 04:26:00)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-13 03:42:05

Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#2 2011-07-13 04:49:44

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#3 2011-07-13 13:02:33

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#4 2011-07-13 14:17:11

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#5 2011-07-13 16:30:00

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#6 2011-07-13 18:53:30

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#7 2011-07-13 22:42:01

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#8 2011-07-14 09:01:31

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#9 2011-07-14 17:21:51

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#10 2011-07-14 18:43:35

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#11 2011-07-16 13:08:23

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#12 2011-07-25 16:56:14

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#13 2011-08-05 16:33:08

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#14 2011-11-09 12:06:25

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#15 2011-11-09 14:22:10

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

#16 2016-12-20 03:52:04

Re: Terminals in Xfce don't show non-ascii characters

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