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#1 2006-01-19 22:04:16

aviad
Member
Registered: 2006-01-19
Posts: 22

console apps are not shown properly

Hi!  smile

I'm a new Arch convert, and so far I have (only!) one problem, but It's about to drive me crazy. console apps such as - mc, mp3blaster, elinks, are not shown corectly. (just in case you haven't understood me - I'm talking here when X not working) For example, in MC the two panels are mixing one onto the other. I hope someone is understanding what the hell I'm talking about...

My first thought was it has something to do with the consolefont. So I swithced back to default8x16.

 setfont /usr/share/kbd/consolefont/default8x16.gz

it was my font on my old distro, gentoo, and there I didn't have any problems. It did not help.

I would love to try and google this, but due to my somewhat crappy English, I don't think it's possible. I simply don't know how to put this.

So, I hope someone in here will be able to help.


Someday, I'll be a real boy!

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#2 2006-01-20 00:53:06

elasticdog
Member
From: Washington, USA
Registered: 2005-05-02
Posts: 995
Website

Re: console apps are not shown properly

Do these applications work properly in a terminal window when X is running?  Do you have a way of posting a screenshot of what it looks like or describing the problem in more detail?

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#3 2006-01-20 10:15:57

aviad
Member
Registered: 2006-01-19
Posts: 22

Re: console apps are not shown properly

they work fine in a terminal window. But I do a lot of work without X runing, so it really bugs me.

I don't think there is any way for me to post a screen shot. I don't have a digital camera.
I think I heard once that you can do something with /dev/fb and convert it to jpeg. Is it true? if so, will someone please tell me how, so I can share my problems with the world.  wink


================
UPDATE: I just found out about fbgrab. smile
Here is how it looks when I start working. It's not so bad actually.
[URL=http://img11.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pic6ff.png]pic6ff.th.png[/URL]

But when I start to move around, things gets messy.
[URL=http://img14.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pic25dk.png]pic25dk.th.png[/URL]

It's not an fbsplash issue as well.
[URL=http://img4.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pic37iu.png]pic37iu.th.png[/URL]

Elinks menus.
[URL=http://img4.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pic41uc.png]pic41uc.th.png[/URL]

Any ideas?


Someday, I'll be a real boy!

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#4 2006-03-04 23:44:58

Firmicus
Forum Fellow
From: Germany
Registered: 2006-02-28
Posts: 168

Re: console apps are not shown properly

I have encountered exactly the same problem with Midnight Commander in the console and it also vexed me (even though I might not use the console as extensively as you do wink). Note that mc has similar problems on an X terminal, but they have to do with non-ascii characters messing up the screen (probably because I have a UTF-8 locale). These seem to be two separate issues, but ...

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#5 2006-03-05 08:15:56

_Gandalf_
Member
Registered: 2006-01-12
Posts: 735

Re: console apps are not shown properly

I had the same issue as yours, i thinks it needs a bug roll

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#6 2006-03-19 12:30:55

Lone_Wolf
Member
From: Netherlands, Europe
Registered: 2005-10-04
Posts: 11,868

Re: console apps are not shown properly

I've done some searching and it seems MC has a problem with UTF8 fonts.

a workaround is to start mc like this :

mc -a

This uses +, |, - for line drawing and looks ugly, but it works.

Other suggestions i found : switch to an iso-8859-1 font (not sure how to do this).

There are patches from redhat and suse to fix UTF8 support for mc, and they will be included in mc 4.7, but there's no release date mentioned for that version yet.

This is the link for the suse patches : http://www.suse.de/~nadvornik/mc.html

They also need a patched version of slang.

I haven't tried the patches.


Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.


(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

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#7 2006-03-21 20:30:34

codemac
Member
From: Cliche Tech Place
Registered: 2005-05-13
Posts: 794
Website

Re: console apps are not shown properly

You aren't running a vesafb with some funky options are you?

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#8 2006-03-21 21:02:51

aviad
Member
Registered: 2006-01-19
Posts: 22

Re: console apps are not shown properly

as Lone_Wolf wrote above me, the problem is with UTF-8 locales. (although in my box it's not limitied only for mc)
what complicated things for me was the fact that I also need to use the iso08 (hebrew) font, which also has problems.

It goes like this:
ISO8859-X locale + default font = all is OK. (except I can't read hebrew)
ISO8859-8 + hebrew font= some problems, but still usable.
UTF-8 locale + any font = see the screenshots up.

When I wrote my first message, I was on UTF-8 locale. that's why changing to default font did not help.

For now, I switched to an ISO-based locale. And if I need to work with  X in UTF8, I can always do so via gdm.


Someday, I'll be a real boy!

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#9 2006-03-21 21:42:01

codemac
Member
From: Cliche Tech Place
Registered: 2005-05-13
Posts: 794
Website

Re: console apps are not shown properly

Oooook.  Sorry, forgot this was an app specific thing.  If you set your vesafb to ypan versus ywrap there are different character issues that can come up when using ncurses/scrolling apps, I was thinking that might be this, but clearly it is a UTF8 thing.

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#10 2006-03-21 22:23:32

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: console apps are not shown properly

This happens to me exactly as you describe Aviad, only on the console... I first saw this with xorgcfg and alsamixer, and it still happens every time I use those apps when X is not running.


Judging from what I saw with xorgcfg, I think that part of the problem is that old stuff isn't cleared from the display before new stuff is shown, i.e. the display is not being updated properly. Alsamixer shows some similar stuff; however, its display is whacky enough that I don't think refresh problems are sufficient to explain it.

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#11 2006-03-22 11:49:09

Romashka
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 1,054

Re: console apps are not shown properly

Will those UTF-8 patches be applied to MC in Arch Linux?
All mainstream distros have them.
There are even patches to compile mc with slang2.
MC is depeloped very slowly, so I think it worth to patch it havily instead of waiting for 4.7.

Maybe we should start a thread or wiki page where console programs will be listed and UTF8 issues will be highlighted?


to live is to die

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#12 2006-03-23 21:13:13

depi
Member
From: EU - Slovakia
Registered: 2005-12-07
Posts: 39
Website

Re: console apps are not shown properly

Romashka wrote:

Will those UTF-8 patches be applied to MC in Arch Linux?
All mainstream distros have them.
There are even patches to compile mc with slang2.
MC is depeloped very slowly, so I think it worth to patch it havily instead of waiting for 4.7.

Maybe we should start a thread or wiki page where console programs will be listed and UTF8 issues will be highlighted?

Yes this is a good idea. I have also this problem, and the MC really looks ugly  and messy sad

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#13 2006-04-09 11:56:49

Mikos
Member
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Registered: 2005-05-03
Posts: 228
Website

Re: console apps are not shown properly

I have exactly same problem. It is really pissing me off, because Arch Linux seems to be the only distribution with broken UTF8 support I have tried :-( Even old Red Hat 9 had working UTF8 support.

And btw. I have looked to mc PKGBUILD and there _are_ UTF8 related patches. Also ncurses is compiled with UTF8 support. So this is really strange and I don't know what to do :-(

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#14 2006-04-09 12:14:55

Mikos
Member
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Registered: 2005-05-03
Posts: 228
Website

Re: console apps are not shown properly

I have filled bug report, you can look here: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/4418

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#15 2006-08-02 20:23:45

cheer
Member
From: Russia, St. Petersburg
Registered: 2006-08-02
Posts: 131

Re: console apps are not shown properly

Hello. Recently I've downloaded and installed archlinux 0.7.2 x86_64, this issue isn't fixed. So, is there any way to stay on UTF-8 (fix ncurses apps)?

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#16 2006-08-16 06:21:51

cheer
Member
From: Russia, St. Petersburg
Registered: 2006-08-02
Posts: 131

Re: console apps are not shown properly

No, I have this version too. As I mentioned there we can patch mc. This works for both x86 and x86_64.

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