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#1 2012-03-21 23:05:18

brianb
Member
From: Montreal, QC
Registered: 2012-02-17
Posts: 81
Website

IPA symbols in xterm/tty

Hi,

Does anyone know if it's possible to display IPA symbols either in xterm or in console (tty), or better yet, in both? These symbols are all supported in Unicode, but they show up as solid boxes in my terminal. I'm a linguist and regularly read/write emails with IPA. I recently started using Mutt for email, and this is the only thing I can't get working.

My locale is set to en_US.UTF8, and I can see other non-ASCII symbols (accented characters, etc.), just not IPA. Also, I've tried running

xterm -u8

and

xterm -lc

with no difference. My font is terminus, but the solid boxes show up even when I use the default xterm font.

To see a list of the symbols I'm talking about, look here: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-unicode.htm.

Thanks for any help anyone might have!

Brian

Last edited by brianb (2012-03-21 23:05:38)

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#2 2012-03-21 23:38:02

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: IPA symbols in xterm/tty

You can try fbterm for non-X terminal (tty, console) as the regular one can support 512 characters max.


Which font have you been using previously?

Edit: Have you tried e.g. gentium?
* http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?name=gentium
* https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?K=gentium


Edit 2: I'm using terminus too and I can input the symbols [in hex in vim] or copy from that website and they are printed properly in xterm (default font) and urxvt (terminus).

Last edited by karol (2012-03-21 23:49:10)

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#3 2012-03-21 23:52:00

brianb
Member
From: Montreal, QC
Registered: 2012-02-17
Posts: 81
Website

Re: IPA symbols in xterm/tty

Thanks, karol.

If you're using terminus and can input/copy IPA symbols into xterm, then something must be wrong on my end. Here's the xterm part of my .Xresources:

! xterm --------------------------------------------------------------------

xterm*geometry:           85x25
xterm*font:              -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1
xterm*dynamicColors:      true
xterm*utf8:               2
xterm*eightBitInput:      true
xterm*saveLines:          512
xterm*scrollKey:          true
xterm*scrollTtyOutput:    false
xterm*scrollBar:          false
xterm*rightScrollBar:     false
xterm*jumpScroll:         true
xterm*multiScroll:        true
xterm*toolBar:            false
*VT100.colorBDMode:       true
*VT100.colorBD:           white
*VT100.colorULMode:       true
*VT100.colorUL:           darkcyan

Is there maybe a difference between having terminus-font from community, vs. having terminus-font-ttf from AUR? I have the community one...

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#4 2012-03-21 23:59:03

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: IPA symbols in xterm/tty

A-ha!
It seems that xterm shows just some symbols, e.g. ʤ is printed as a box.


Edit: I'm using terminus from [community] repo.

Last edited by karol (2012-03-22 00:07:19)

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#5 2012-03-22 00:08:47

thisoldman
Member
From: Pittsburgh
Registered: 2009-04-25
Posts: 1,172

Re: IPA symbols in xterm/tty

If the font you're using doesn't contain the glyphs, you get boxes instead.  With DejaVu Sans Mono, I can see the IPA glyphs.

My .Xdefaults lines that may or may not all be necessary:

XTerm*utf8:                 2
XTerm*faceName:             xft:DejaVu Sans Mono:style=Book:size=8
XTerm.cjk_width:            true

You would most probably want a larger font than I use.

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#6 2012-03-22 00:14:06

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: IPA symbols in xterm/tty

Terminus font has the glyphs, but I get mostly boxes in xterm. urxvt seems to be working fine.

Last edited by karol (2012-03-22 00:14:27)

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#7 2012-03-22 00:26:46

brianb
Member
From: Montreal, QC
Registered: 2012-02-17
Posts: 81
Website

Re: IPA symbols in xterm/tty

I've got urxvt installed (never use it though), and just edited my .Xresources to use terminus in urxvt. I can confirm that the IPA glyphs show up properly there, but not in xterm.

I've been looking for a reason to switch from xterm to urxvt... maybe this is it...

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#8 2012-03-22 18:48:11

brianb
Member
From: Montreal, QC
Registered: 2012-02-17
Posts: 81
Website

Re: IPA symbols in xterm/tty

Well, I've been using urxvt and will probably just stick with that. Also got transparency working, which I've come to like, and which xterm lacks afaik.

Would still be curious to know if anyone figures out why xterm acts differently from urxvt in terms of displaying IPA.

Thanks again for the help.

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#9 2012-04-04 11:31:28

lava
Member
From: /belarus/minsk
Registered: 2010-12-06
Posts: 6

Re: IPA symbols in xterm/tty

Having the same issue with xterm+terminus+cyrillic
If change to another font, I can see any glyph in the xterm, but terminus just refuse to show them and chow only adorable rectangles instead. Can't figure out what's wrong.

For tty just use ter-c16n where 'c' stands for cyrillic set. Maybe topic-starter can look for the one, which will work for him?

My .Xresources at the moment: http://ix.io/2gX


BTW I can remember I have used terminus with xterm some time ago, but can't now.

Last edited by lava (2012-04-04 11:36:34)

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