Using UTF-8 in UNIX-terminals and programs

If you want to use UTF-8 in your terminal emulator, it has to support UTF-8 and a system with UTF-8-locales installed. Locales are definitions for date, language, timezone settings, currency and most user defined parameters. Most GNU/Linux-distributions have UTF-8-locales installed.

When logging onto servers like login.stud.ntnu.no with UTF-8 you have to configure your terminalemulator first. In PuTTY you have to go to the Translation under the Category-part and choose UTF-8 in the list Character sets translation on received data. uxterm and urxvt use UTF-8 as default, and in Gnome Terminal you might have to change the settings in the menu Terminal-Choose character set-UTF-8.

You have to tell the system you want to use UTF-8-locales after you've logged in. You can check to see what locale you're using with locale

gaupe:~$ locale
LANG=en_US
LC_CTYPE=nb_NO
LC_NUMERIC=nb_NO
LC_TIME=nb_NO
LC_COLLATE="en_US"
LC_MONETARY="en_US"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US"
LC_PAPER="en_US"
LC_NAME="en_US"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US"
LC_ALL=

To change the locales, you use the command export. You will want to change LANG and LC_ALL on gaupe like this:

gaupe:~$ export LANG=en_DK.UTF-8
gaupe:~$ export LC_ALL=en_DK.UTF-8
gaupe:~$ locale
LANG=en_DK.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_DK.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=en_DK.UTF-8

vim and UTF-8

vim uses UTF-8 internally, and converts between character sets when reading and writing files. You can instruct vim to use UTF-8 by default (unless it detects otherwise) by putting the following in your .vimrc:

set fileencoding=utf-8
set encoding=utf-8
set termencoding=utf-8

UTF-8 and emacs

Emacs on login.stud.ntnu.no supports UFT-8. If your version doesn't, you probably have to install mule (sudo aptitude install mule-ucs) and add the following to your .emacs (or .xemacs/custom.el):

(prefer-coding-system 'mule-utf-8)
(setq locale-coding-system 'mule-utf-8)
(set-terminal-coding-system 'mule-utf-8)
(set-keyboard-coding-system 'mule-utf-8)
(set-selection-coding-system 'mule-utf-8)

Using UTF-8 with irssi

If you want to use UTF-8 with irssi, you type the following into your terminal:

/set term_charset UTF-8

/set recode_out_default_charset UTF-8

/recode add UTF-8

 /help recode 

mutt and UTF-8

If you use mutt for e-mail, you can configure the .muttrc-file to use UTF-8:

set charset=utf-8
set send_charset=utf-8

au BufNewFile,BufRead mutt*    set tw=77 ai nocindent fileencoding=utf-8

UTF-8 and pine

The e-mail client pine does not support UTF-8.

It is possible, if you really want to, to use UTF-8 in pine. You have to use a program that translates everything going in and out so that pine still thinks its UTF-8-less:

user@gaupe:~$ luit -encoding 'ISO-8859-1' pine