[SOLVED] Xterm Japanese/Unicode Characters not displaying (??) instead

Question

Hey,
So I'm new to linux and arch and I've made a point of reading every relevant thread posted when I searched for 'Japanese terminal' and I haven't been able to get my terminal to display Japanese characters. All I see are ?????.
This is my /etc/locale.config
LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=C
This is the output from running:
$ locale
LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=\"en_CA.UTF-8\"
LC_TIME=en_CA.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY=\"en_CA.UTF-8\"
LC_MESSAGES=C
LC_PAPER=\"en_CA.UTF-8\"
LC_NAME=\"en_CA.UTF-8\"
LC_ADDRESS=\"en_CA.UTF-8\"
LC_TELEPHONE=\"en_CA.UTF-8\"
LC_MEASUREMENT=\"en_CA.UTF-8\"
LC_IDENTIFICATION=\"en_CA.UTF-8\"
LC_ALL=
This is the output from running:
$ locale -a
C
POSIX
en_CA.utf8
en_US.utf8
ja_JP.utf8
This is my ~/.Xresources file:
! Name
Xterm*termName: xterm-256color
! Font style
xterm*faceName: xft:monospace:size=11
xterm*faceNameDoublesize: xft:Droid Sans Japanese:style=Regular
xterm*utf8: 2
! Window size
xterm*VT100.geometry: 100x40
! No more bell
xterm*vbell: True
! Scrollback
xterm*savelines: 4096
! double-click to select whole URLs :D
xterm*charClass: 33:48,36-47:48,58-59:48,61:48,63-64:48,95:48,126:48
! Scrollbar
xterm*rightScrollBar: false
xterm*ScrollBar: false
! Foreground & background
*background:#293b3b
*foreground:#bf6e63
!terminal colours----------------------------------------------------------------------
!http://www.xcolors.net/dl/fishbone
!black
*color0:#293b3b
*color8:#344040
!red
*color5:#bf5357
*color13:#bf6367
!green
*color2:#41a551
*color10:#51a55f
!yellow
*color3:#aea64f
*color11:#aea75d
!blue
*color4:#416ea5
*color12:#5177a5
!magenta
*color1:#bf6053
*color09:#bf6e63
!cyan
*color6:#714da5
*color14:#7859a5
!white
*color7:#876868
*color15:#876f6f
Also, when I trying inputting text into xterm using ibus's anthy, nothing gets entered, and I'm assuming that is related to the problem of not being able to view the Japanese characters properly
I'm really not sure where I'm going wrong, but it's driving me nuts and any help would be greatly appreciated.
Last edited by Bipolarbearz (2014-12-24 03:24:40)

Answer 1

Your default xterm font is DejaVu Sans Mono. I don't know how scim and anthy may complicate setting up a locale but you do appear to have something oddly configured.
Your output from the bare locale command shows backslashed double quotes.  My output shows no backslashes:
$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
-- snip --
LC_ALL=
The only line I have uncommented in /etc/locale.gen is:
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
The only possibly significant difference between your xterm settings and mine is the way we set xterm to use UTF-8. I have:
⁣    XTerm*locale: true
You have:
⁣    xterm*utf8: 2
I think they may just be different methods that reach the same end when you only have UTF-8 locales installed.  I can get the Droid glyphs to display using either resource setting.
If I were in your shoes, I would work through the Archwiki's Locale page, step by step, to see if I could silence the warnings.
If the warnings still appeared, I would step back, and do things one step at a time. If you uninstall anthy, or scim-anthy, and regenerate your locales, do the warnings disappear?  Does xterm display the CJK glyphs? If not, does regenerating the locales using only en_CA.UTF-8 work?
I wish I could offer more help but I don't have the knowledge to offer more.
If you want to see which installed fonts say they have Japanese language support, use this command:
fc-list ':lang=ja'
Do note that what a font advertises and what you and I would call language support may be different.