urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

wgetfree · 2012-06-07 01:41:35

I'm trying to display special characters in my urxvt terminal prompt but have had no success so far as it just displays question marks instead of the characters.

Here is the output of locale -a:

??[01:32 AM][joel][~]
???? locale -a
C
POSIX
en_US
en_US.iso88591
en_US.utf8

And my .Xresources:

URxvt.scrollBar: false
URxvt*scrollBar_right: false
URxvt*borderLess: false
URxvt*background: grey
URxvt*font: -*-terminus-medium-r-*-*-17-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*

From what I understand, Terminus should be able to display special characters. I also tried Tamsyn but that did not work. I have font paths defined in my xorg.conf and I don't think .bashrc has anything to do with it.

Any ideas?

kotharia · 2012-06-07 02:48:39

What's the output of locale (without the "-a")?

wgetfree · 2012-06-07 02:50:04

kotharia wrote:

What's the output of locale (without the "-a")?

??[02:46 AM][joel][~]
???? locale
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=

Last edited by wgetfree (2012-06-07 02:50:45)

doug piston · 2012-06-07 03:11:43

I believe utf should be lowercase..

┌─[jarvis][watson][~]
└──╼ locale
LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.utf8"
LC_TIME="en_US.utf8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.utf8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.utf8"
LC_NAME="en_US.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.utf8"
LC_ALL=

wgetfree · 2012-06-07 03:20:17

doug piston wrote:

I believe utf should be lowercase..

┌─[jarvis][watson][~]
└──╼ locale
LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.utf8"
LC_TIME="en_US.utf8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.utf8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.utf8"
LC_NAME="en_US.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.utf8"
LC_ALL=

I tried doing that with no change.

doug piston · 2012-06-07 03:31:17

Change it in your rc.conf as well.

grep "utf" /etc/rc.conf
LOCALE="en_US.utf8"

And read this

Last edited by doug piston (2012-06-07 03:35:16)

mloskot · 2012-06-07 10:12:35

doug piston wrote:

Change it in your rc.conf as well.
grep "utf" /etc/rc.conf
LOCALE="en_US.utf8"
And read this

Interesting, the utf8 suffix is not used anywhere in the Locale article, instead UTF-8 is used.
Some pieces of advice in the Locale problems thread seem to contradict with the ones in here.

Is this related to convention of locale files naming used in Arch (a distribution)?
Perhaps someone could clarify *.utf8 vs *.UTF-8 locale?

Last edited by mloskot (2012-06-07 10:15:22)

bohoomil · 2012-06-07 11:19:07

wgetfree wrote:

And my .Xresources:

<snip>
URxvt*font: -*-terminus-medium-r-*-*-17-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
                                                  ^^^^^^^^^

Try using iso10646-1 encoding instead of the fallback iso8859-x.

doug piston · 2012-06-07 14:49:47

mloskot wrote:

doug piston wrote:
Change it in your rc.conf as well.
grep "utf" /etc/rc.conf
LOCALE="en_US.utf8"
And read this
Interesting, the utf8 suffix is not used anywhere in the Locale article, instead UTF-8 is used.
Some pieces of advice in the Locale problems thread seem to contradict with the ones in here.
Is this related to convention of locale files naming used in Arch (a distribution)?
Perhaps someone could clarify *.utf8 vs *.UTF-8 locale?

I happen to notice that as well after posting. I personally haven't messed with my locale and just looked at mine and noticed the difference between CAPS and non-CAPS. Possibly I should have not done this as I don't really know why/what the difference is.

I did check my /etc/locale.gen and these two lines are uncommented (As expected). This would be why I linked to that particular section of the Wiki.

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
en_US ISO-8859-1

If anyone cares to shed some more light on this I will be more then happy to stop running my mouth.

kotharia · 2012-06-08 00:32:52

You may need to use an Xft rather than a bitmap font; ie. in your .Xresources, try

urxvt.font: xft:Terminus

Arch Linux

#1 2012-06-07 01:41:35

urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

#2 2012-06-07 02:48:39

Re: urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

#3 2012-06-07 02:50:04

Re: urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

#4 2012-06-07 03:11:43

Re: urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

#5 2012-06-07 03:20:17

Re: urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

#6 2012-06-07 03:31:17

Re: urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

#7 2012-06-07 10:12:35

Re: urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

#8 2012-06-07 11:19:07

Re: urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

#9 2012-06-07 14:49:47

Re: urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

#10 2012-06-08 00:32:52

Re: urxvt displaying "???" instead of special characters

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