The console server supports any encoding supported by iconv, but uses
Unicode internally.  The default encoding is ISO8859-1, another useful
variant is UTF-8.  To configure the console server to use UTF-8 you
have to use the `--encoding' argument:

# settrans -fg /dev/vcs /hurd/console --encoding=UTF-8

If you actually try this, you will notice two problems:

1. You can not enter the letters in your locale, because the keyboard
doesn't have the right layout.  Keyboard maps come later.  For now,
you have to help yourself with the direct input with RightAlt.  Maybe
I will put a simple compose key feature in the pc_kbd driver, so that
some western locales can be used more easily.

2. If you bother to look up the unicode hex code and enter it with
AltGr, the font can not display it!  If you are using the ncursesw
driver, do you use it while you are logged in from a working UTF-8
terminal?  If not, then this is your problem.  An ncurses driver for
non-UTF-8 terminals is on the TODO list.  But if you use the VGA
driver, you need to load a different font.

This is because by default, the vga driver just reads the VGA card
memory and takes the font that is stored there.  This font has a
limited characterset (256 characters, many graphical symbols among
that), so you won't get more than a few western characters with that.

Unicode support
===============

But you want it all.  You want to read Middle Old English.  You want
to read Thai.  Your Korean spam.  Georgian script.  Hebrew.  And you
can have it.

You need a Unicode font.  There are good ones provided by Markus Kuhn,
the UCS fonts.  Get them here:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/download/ucs-fonts.tar.gz

(See also the web page at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html).

Now, load the font by providing it with the --font option to the vga
driver.  I suggest only the 8x13 and the 9x15 fonts, but feel free to
try others, too.  Note that the VGA text mode can not really display 9
pixel wide characters.  But as most characters have the ninth column
empty, and the VGA text mode can display an empty column between two
adjacent character cells, this trick allows us to display most of the
9x15 font correctly.  So you won't notice a difference until you come
to very broad characters or special symbols, where you will see that
the last column is cut off.  (BTW, I wrote the dynafont code carefully
to still support horizontal line graphic characters properly in 9
pixel wide fonts.  This is done by exploiting some special modes in
the VGA hardware.  This is why in 512 (256) glyph mode and 9 pixel
wide fonts, you are limited to 448 (224) normal characters: 64 (32)
slots are reserved for the horizontal line graphic characters so they
are drawn continuously.)

So, try the following:

# console -d vga --font 8x13.bdf -d pc_kbd -d generic_speaker /dev/vcs

or

# console -d vga --font 9x15.bdf -d pc_kbd -d generic_speaker /dev/vcs

If you are satisfied, copy your default font to
/lib/hurd/fonts/vga-system.bdf, where it will be picked up
automatically in favor to the graphic card's font.

More about fonts
================

While we are talking about fonts, try also the 8x13O font with
--font-italic and 8x13B or 9x15B font with --font-bold.  You can save
them in /lib/hurd/fonts/vga-system-bold.bdf and
/lib/hurd/fonts/vga-system-italic.bdf, too.

To activate those fonts on your virtual console, try the following:

# echo `tput sitm`Hello slanted world.`tput ritm`

and

# echo `tput gsbom`Hello bold world.`tput grbom`

I hope you like what you see.  Imagine this in emacs font-lock mode.


Unicode, finally
================

There are a few more steps necessary to make your Unicode environment
ready:

Add a Unicode locale to /etc/locale.gen, and generate the locale
information for that!  For example, I am living in Germany, and
normally use de_DE with the encoding ISO8859-1.  My Unicode locale is
de_DE.UTF-8, so I am adding that to /etc/locale.gen:

de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8

and rerun locale-gen:

# locale-gen

See also /share/i18n/SUPPORTED.  You can also do this more conveniently with

# dpkg-reconfigure locales

Once you generated this, make it your default locale:

# export LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

If you have also loaded the unicode font above, you are set up.  Try
for example to view the examples/ files in the ucs-fonts package with
less.

# less fonts/examples/UTF_8-demo.txt

You should see most of that file with the 9x15 font (a bit less with
the 8x13 font).

You should be able to do the above process with other encodings than
UTF-8.  But you should _always_ use a Unicode font, because the
console client uses Unicode internally for everything.

Application specific notes
==========================

If you enter unicode characters at the shell, libreadline loses track
of the number of characters displayed (it is not aware of multi-byte
encodings like UTF-8).  This is fixed in readline 4.3 (which is not
yet in Debian).

If you use mutt, install mutt-utf8.  For lynx, edit /etc/lynx.cfg,
making sure that CHARACTER_SET is set to utf-8.

If you use other applications, try to search with google for
"application-name utf8" or "application-name unicode".  Often you find
what you need.  The issues are the same for the GNU/Hurd and GNU/Linux
systems, so most of the information can be shared, except how to setup
the system console to support Unicode, of course.