Re: reading/writing Greek in Evolution (on English system)

[David Carson <dccarson yahoo com>]

--- On Thu, May 16, 2002 Pablo Saratxaga wrote:
> Kaixo!
> 
> On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 07:05:51AM -0700, David
> Carson wrote:
> 
> > This question can probably apply to other
> > non-Latin-alphabet languages as well.
> > > I have the following setup:
> > - Mandrake 8.2
> > - US English is primary language
> > - asked for Greek as second language during
> install
> 
> That is not "Greek as second language", but instead
> "files and packages
> for supporting Greek are installed".
> 
> But for them to be used you have still to do
> something.
> 
> > I regularly read and write Greek correspondence,
> but
> > my primary language setup is English.
> > > 1. How do I read Greek messages?  I have tried
> 
> In Gnome2 it is supposed to work nicely out of the
> box (utf-8 used
> internally, and nice fontset aliases available).
> 
> But for Gnome1.x the easiest for you would be to run
> under
> a Greek locale, just set the LANGUAGE variable to
> "C" (so no translations
> are used, the interface is in English), but the
> LC_CTYPE is set to
> Greek locale, so the X11 fontsets and keyboard input
> cover iso-8859-7
> encoding and Greek is displayed/typed correctly.
> 
> Of course such configuration is only possible if you
> want to use
> Greek and an ascii-only language (which is the case
> of English).
> 
> > changing the encoding, but the message simply
> changes
> > from one kind of jibberish to another!  I expect
> my
> 
> It isn't an encoding problem, but a display problem.
> 
> > fonts are to blame, but I don't know how to change
> > them in Evolution.
> 
> Probably they use the locale fontset, for English it
> is iso8859-1.
> You need to use a Greek locale.
> 
> > 2. How do I switch keyboard layout, so that I can
> > write in Greek (using 8859-7, I assume) or a
> mixture
> > of Greek and English?
> 
> Define your keyboard so that you use the Greek
> keyboard; it is, as all
> non-latin ones, a dual keyboard, with US QWERTY as
> the first layout,
> so it is fine to use it for you.
> But you can type only chars that are covered by your
> locale;
> as iso-8859-1 doens't have any greek letter at all,
> you cannot type
> Greek with that locale.
> 
> 
> So; you need to:
> 
> - setup your locales preference to Greek
> - edit the file ~/.i18n to change LANGUAGE to
> LANGUAGE="C"
> - setup your keyboard to Greek keyboard
> 
> > Any more general pointers or references to HOWTOs
> on
> > this subject are also welcome.
> 
> It's quite simple; in Gnome1.x you are limited for
> output and input
> to the charset of your locale.
> In Gnome2 unicode is used internally, pango is used
> for displaying (mening
> support for all languages (as long as you have the
> fonts),
> and the Xutf8LookupString() function is used for
> keyboard input (or at
> least it should) meaning you can type in utf-8.
> That is, Gnome2 will be independent of the locale
> encoding.
> 
> It is possible with Gnome1.x to use an UTF-8 locale;
> it will behave
> as Gnome2 in regards of internal encoding and input;
> however for the
> output it gets quite nightmarish.
> The problem with Gnome1.x in utf-8 is that it uses
> the first matching
> *-iso10646-1 font.
> But those fonts are always incomplete, and you can
> very well end up
> with a font that don't have the glyphs you need (eg:
> you get a font
> with armenian letters but not greek letters).
> The big difference in Gnome2 is that it will detect
> the missing glyphs
> and will be able to look into other fonts for them;
> and also will
> recognize different scritps, and use different fonts
> for them.
> 
> So, you can use UTF-8 for GReek & English in
> Gnome1.x; but you will need
> to carefully fine-tune the fonts setting. 
> 


I appreciate the response, even though I chose to do
nothing about it.  I liked the sound of the phrase: 

> In Gnome2 it is supposed to work nicely out of the
> box (utf-8 used
> internally, and nice fontset aliases available).

so I decided I could just wait.

Well, I couldn't resist trying Mandrake 9.0 Beta 2,
since it comes with Gnome2.  I installed, US English
as my primary language and Greek as additional as
before.  I chose Gnome2 as my desktop.

I fired up Evolution and forwarded a piece of mail
with Greek (Unicode UTF-8) in it. No luck. ;-(

Right now I'll be happy if I can just get the reading
part working.  Evolution lets me choose a "Character
Encoding" of Unicode UTF-8 (or Greek 8859-7), but what
is displays is the same old gibberish.

I looked at the same piece of mail using Galeon and
verified that it is indeed Unicode and that it can be
read when the rendering is correct.

Someone please tell me there is a simple solution to
this.  I cannot endorse Gnome2 to my friends if I have
to tell them to edit such-and-such a file, become
root, etc. They don't want to be bothered.

I'm hoping the answer is that I just didn't wait long
enough.  Maybe Evolution isn't quite Gnome2 compatible
yet and is not using the right fonts.  Maybe it is due
to the fact that Mandrake 9.0 is still beta.  Maybe
there is a config setting for Unicode fonts.  I hope
the answer is, or will be, something I can tell my
mother to try.

Thanks,
David

=====
David Carson
Home: dccarson@yahoo.com

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