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Setup mlterm for Chinese - help needed, pleas

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Chimin Yen
2002-12-05
2002-12-06
  • Chimin Yen

    Chimin Yen - 2002-12-05

    Here is what I've done so far:

    (1) Downloaded the mlterm source tarball, and compiled
         the package successfully,

    tar zxvf mlterm-2.6.2.tar.gz
    cd mlterm mlterm-2.6.2
    ./configure --prefix /usr/local --enable-anti-alias
    make
    make install

    (2) Then launch mlterm,

    mlterm

    (3) In the mlterm window,

    press C-M3 (Control-Right Mouse Key) to have mlterm
    setup GUI

    In the GUI window, I have

    Encoding -- GB18030
    X Input Method -- Chinput
    XIM Local -- zh_CN.GB18030

    However, mlterm still fails in displaying Chinese characters.

    On my Red Hat 7.3 system, the locale zh_CN.GB18030 does
    exist under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale (lower case 'gb' but I've
    tried to change 'GB' to 'gb' in the GUI window, and got the same
    results). And my LANG env var is set to be zh_CN.GB19030

    It seems mlterm more popular on Debian. What should I do
    additional work for it on Red Hat?

    Belive it's something to do with fonts files under mlterm-2.6.2/etc

    aafont taafont tfont vfont font

    Found no info on what they are and how to set them.

    Appreciate if you can investigate this matter a little further,
    which, I believe, would benefit many of us.

     
    • MINAMI Hirokazu

      MINAMI Hirokazu - 2002-12-05

      How to set up etc/*font is described in the "Font Configuration File" section of mlterm's man page.

       
    • Chimin Yen

      Chimin Yen - 2002-12-05

      Yes, indeed. I didn't go further than option section as the first
      failed option -A discouraged me to go on.

      The installation, however, doesn't set them for Chinese.
      The format for font names seems special to mlterm. I just
      stopped there as I believe it would take much time to get
      it work.

      For example, I uncommented this line
      #ISO8859_1 = -kochi-mincho-medium-*--%d-*-iso8859-1;10,a10;12,6x12;

      invoke mlterm reports error:
      font -kochi-mincho-medium-*--16-*-iso8859-1 couln't be loaded.

      This might be due to absense of this font, but on the other
      hand, I do not quite understand how to make my Simsun
      font correctly specified in these font config files.

      Some sample files are highly appreciated; otherwise, I'll
      have to give up here.

       
    • MINAMI Hirokazu

      MINAMI Hirokazu - 2002-12-05

      Sorry, I don't have a Simsun font and cannot give an example.

      The font name should be choosed from a list created by "xlsfonts".
      Because mlterm is now using a GBK font for 2byte chars of GB18030, you may have to specify the font name that ends by "-gbk-0" for GBK in your mlterm/font.

       
    • Chimin Yen

      Chimin Yen - 2002-12-05

      > mlterm is now using a GBK font for 2byte chars of GB18030,

      It's real hard to have font works. Given this ristriction,
      I have only one choice : zysong18030. When I specified it
      in font file, mlterm doesn't complain but nothing displayed.

      Using something else, mlterm reports font is not loaded.

      Well, maybe I should to give up.

       
    • MINAMI Hirokazu

      MINAMI Hirokazu - 2002-12-05

      If you have a unicode font which covers the glyphs you want to see, mlterm can use it insted of gbk font. See "-u" option.

       
    • Chimin Yen

      Chimin Yen - 2002-12-05

      > If you have a unicode font which covers the glyphs you want to see, mlterm can use it insted of gbk font

      With -u option I got limited progress, but the display doesn't look
      good. (1) too much space between chars (2) The chinese font
      database is of poor quality. Note that only font that works for me
      is Simsun. If mlterm doesn't support Simsun, maybe I shouldn't
      use mlterm.

       
    • MINAMI Hirokazu

      MINAMI Hirokazu - 2002-12-06

      Sorry, I don't understand. 
      What's the chinese font database?

       

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