Public bug reported:
This is a continuation of Bug #19487 and Bug #29523, but since it seems
(at least in Feisty Faun) to involve echoing to screen rather than the
keyboard, I thought I should post it as a separate item.
Following previous discussions, I tried locale-gen fr_CA and rebooted,
but the problem did not go away. Incidentally, the system told me it was
generating fr_CA.ISO-8859-1 but this entity was nowhere to be found
even after I had updated the database.
Therefore I am repeating the note I sent to answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu
, with the added remark that a fix is urgently needed as no civilized
person can get along without using the occasional Umlaut, cedilla, or
tilde.
[ Repeat from answers:]
There is a problem with the echoing of characters to the screen when in
tty (virtual terminal) mode. At first I thought this was related to
fonts in general, but apparently it is not. A brief discussion can be
read in the user forum:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=512717
The environment: Feisty Fawn with kernel 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP. I don't
remember how the terminal font was selected upon installation, but on checking
the Language Support menu it appears that I checked English and French, and
specified English (Canada) as the default language. I also checked Enable
support to enter complex characters. In the Keyboard Preferences
menu, the keyboard model is Generic 105-key (intl) PC and the layout is
Canada French (legacy): but I doubt the keyboard layout is relevant here in
view of the fact that everything works in GUI mode.
For example, in tty the e-acute key (é) is echoed as a blank space on the
screen. If I type it to a text file I cannot see it; but on
reading the same file with a terminal in GUI mode, the character é is displayed
properly. The same is true of all characters. Thus the font of the tty virtual
terminals is identical to that of the GUI terminal. The problem is with echoing
to the screen.
The following is the arrangement of the four rows of characters as I see
them on the GUI terminal (it is possible that you might not see them the
same way). For each now, alt-keys are listed on the top sub-row; shift-
keys on the middle sub-row; lowercase-keys on the bottom sub-row: The
explanatory notes are not necessarily exhaustive.
¬ ¹ @ ³ ¼ ½ ¾ { [ ] } | [1] [2]
° ! # $ % ? * ( ) _ + À -- the last character is capital A-grave
° 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = à -- the last character is l.c. a-grave
q w e ¶ t ¥ u i ø þ ° [3]
Q W E R T Y U I O P [4] Ç -- the last character is capital C-cedilla
q w e r t y u i o p [4] ç -- the last character is l.c. c-cedilla
æ ß ð ª g h j k l [5] {
A S D F G H J K L : È -- the last character is capital E-grave
a s d f g h j k l ; è -- the last character is l.c. e-grave
\ « » ¢ v b n µ / -- 2nd and 3rd characters are guillemets
Ù Z X C V B N M ' . É -- the last character is capital E-acute
ù z x c v b n m , . é -- the last character is l.c. e-acute
NOTES:
[1] In GUI: dead key for French ç or Turkish ş.
On tty: all different.
[2] In GUI: dead key for accent sloping up to the left, e.g. ò.
On tty: all different.
[3] In GUI: dead key for tilde; follow with a space to get ~.
On tty: alt + space makes ~; other combinations are different.
[4] In GUI: dead key for circumflex; follow with a space to get ^.
On tty: makes ^ with space; other combinations are different.
[5] In GUI: dead key for accent sloping up to the right, e.g. í.
On tty: all different.
For all but the ordinary, unaccented characters, the virtual terminal
screen echoes what seem to be IBM Code Page 437 characters. The
following is what I see in tty mode. The quote marks surround code
numbers corresponding to the Code Page 437 glyphs (as best I could
identify them) that resemble what I see. The word same indicates that
I see the same things in tty and GUI modes; the number preceeding same
indicates how many characters in a row (horizontally) are the same in
both modes - e.g., q, w, and e in the 2nd row with alt are the
same in both modes, therefore 3same is noted. A question mark ?
indicates that I couldn't be sure of the character code or that the
result varied when a dead key was used with different letters.
TOP ROW, ALT
202, 211, 1same, 205, 214, 215, 216, 5same, ?, ?
TOP ROW, SHIFT
176, 12same, 218
TOP ROW, L.C.
176, 12same, 248
2ND ROW, ALT
3same, 208, 1same, 005, 2same, 015, 021, 176, see [3]
2ND ROW, SHIFT
10same, see [4], 224
2ND ROW, L.C.
10same, see [4], 223 ?
3RD ROW, ALT
?, 247, ?, 190, 5same, ?, 1same
3RD ROW, SHIFT
10same, 225
3RD ROW, L.C.
10same, blank
4TH ROW, ALT
1same, 191, 213, 004, 3same, 207, 3same
4TH ROW, SHIFT
242, 9same, 226
016, 9same, blank
What I think should happen, of course, is that I would see the same
things in tty mode as on the GUI terminal.
** Affects: Ubuntu
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
--
Characters incorrectly echoed to virtual terminal screens
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/130444
