<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN" "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd" [ <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../../general.ent"> %general-entities; ]> <sect1 id="locale-issues" xreflabel="Locale Related Issues"> <?dbhtml filename="locale-issues.html"?> <sect1info> <othername>$LastChangedBy$</othername> <date>$Date$</date> </sect1info> <title>Locale Related Issues</title> <para>This page contains information about locale related problems and issues. In this paragraph you'll find a generic overview of things that can come up when configuring your system for various locales. The previous sentence and the remainder of this paragraph must still be revised/completed.</para> <sect2> <title>Package Specific Locale Issues</title> <para>For package-specific issues, find the concerned package from the list below and follow the link to view the available information. If a package is not listed here, it does not mean there are no known locale-specific issues or problems with that package. It only means that this page has not been updated with the locale-specific information regarding that package. Please reference the BLFS Wiki page for a particular package for any additional locale-specific information. </para> <itemizedlist> <title>List of Packages with Locale Related Issues</title> <listitem> <para><xref linkend="locale-mc"/></para> </listitem> <listitem> <para><xref linkend="locale-unzip"/></para> </listitem> <listitem> <para><xref linkend="locale-nano"/></para> </listitem> </itemizedlist> <sect3 id="locale-mc" xreflabel="MC-&mc-version;"> <title><xref linkend="mc"/></title> <para>This package makes the assumption that <quote>characters</quote> and <quote>bytes</quote> are the same thing. This is not true in UTF-8 based locales. Due to this assumption <application>MC</application> will incorrectly position characters on the screen. After the cursor is moved a bit the screen becomes totally unreadable, as illustrated on <ulink url="&files-anduin;/mc-bad.png">this screenshot</ulink> (taken in a ru_RU.UTF-8 locale). Additionally, input of non-ASCII characters in the editor is impossible, even after selecting <quote>Other 8-bit</quote> encoding from the menu.</para> </sect3> <sect3 id="locale-unzip" xreflabel="UnZip-&unzip-version;"> <title><xref linkend="unzip"/></title> <note> <para>Use of <application>UnZip</application> in the <application>JDK</application>, <application>Mozilla</application>, <application>DocBook</application> or any other BLFS package installation is not a problem, as BLFS instructions never use <application>UnZip</application> to extract a file with non-ASCII characters in the file's name.</para> </note> <para>The <application>UnZip</application> package assumes that filenames stored in the ZIP archives created on non-Unix systems are encoded in CP850, and that they should be converted to ISO-8859-1 when writing files onto the filesystem. Such assumptions are not always valid. In fact, inside the ZIP archive, filenames are encoded in the DOS codepage that is in use in the relevant country, and the filenames on disk should be in the locale encoding. In MS Windows, the OemToChar() C function (from <filename>User32.DLL</filename>) does the correct conversion (which is indeed the conversion from CP850 to a superset of ISO-8859-1 if MS Windows is set up to use the US English language), but there is no equivalent in Linux.</para> <para>When using <command>unzip</command> to unpack a ZIP archive containing non-ASCII filenames, the filenames are damaged because <command>unzip</command> uses improper conversion when any of its encoding assumptions are incorrect. For example, in the ru_RU.KOI8-R locale, conversion of filenames from CP866 to KOI8-R is required, but conversion from CP850 to ISO-8859-1 is done, which produces filenames consisting of undecipherable characters instead of words (the closest equivalent understandable example for English-only users is rot13). There are several ways around this limitation:</para> <para>1) For unpacking ZIP archives with filenames containing non-ASCII characters, use <ulink url="http://www.winzip.com/">WinZip</ulink> while running the <ulink url="http://www.winehq.com/">Wine</ulink> Windows emulator.</para> <para>2) After running <command>unzip</command>, fix the damage made to the filenames using the <command>convmv</command> tool (<ulink url="http://j3e.de/linux/convmv/"/>). The following is an example for the ru_RU.KOI8-R locale:</para> <blockquote> <para>Step 1. Undo the conversion done by <command>unzip</command>:</para> <screen><userinput>convmv -f iso-8859-1 -t cp850 -r --nosmart --notest \ <replaceable></path/to/unzipped/files></replaceable></userinput></screen> <para>Step 2. Do the correct conversion instead:</para> <screen><userinput>convmv -f cp866 -t koi8-r -r --nosmart --notest \ <replaceable></path/to/unzipped/files></replaceable></userinput></screen> </blockquote> <para>3) Apply this patch to unzip: <ulink url="https://bugzilla.altlinux.ru/attachment.cgi?id=532"/></para> <para>It allows to specify the assumed filename encoding in the ZIP archive using the <option>-O charset_name</option> option and the on-disk filename encoding using the <option>-I charset_name</option> option. Defaults: the on-disk filename encoding is the locale encoding, the encoding inside the ZIP archive is guessed according to the builtin table based on the locale encoding. For US English users, this still means that unzip converts from CP850 to ISO-8859-1 by default.</para> <para>Caveat: this method works only with 8-bit locale encodings, not with UTF-8. Attempting to use a patched <command>unzip</command> in UTF-8 locales may result in a segmentation fault and is probably a security risk.</para> </sect3> <sect3 id="locale-nano" xreflabel="Nano-&nano-version;"> <title><xref linkend="nano"/></title> <para>The current stable version of <application>Nano</application> (&nano-version;) does not support UTF-8 character encodings. A development version is available which addresses these issues. This version can be downloaded at <ulink url="http://www.nano-editor.org/dist/v1.3/nano-1.3.11.tar.gz"/>. Instructions for installing this version are the same as those found on the <xref linkend="nano"/> page.</para> </sect3> </sect2> </sect1>