[kde-linux] Followup questions, thanks (was: Re: Encoding questions)

[Emanoil Kotsev]

> [: Randy Kramer :]
> > But, those 87 fonts include the DejaVu family
(Serif/Sans/Monospace),
>  and
> > on my system, they don't display the upside down e
(they display the
>  box).
> > So, apparently, there are different "versions" (or
subsets?) of those
> > fonts.
> 
> DejaVu itself is a fork of Bitstream's Vera, made
with specific purpose
>  of
> implementing wide variety of scripts, through
collaborative
>  development.
> dejavu.sourceforge.net would be the canonical source
of this family of
> fonts. I can't tell if that would make the
difference, but it may be
>  that
> your system, given KDE 3.4.2, also provides a three
year old version of
> DejaVu.
This could be an issue. I dont remember when everybody
switched to UTF.

As far as I know fonts have two parts (shape and
glyph) correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't
matter.

What you could do (or what I did) is to use
kcharselect to check which font covers the script I
need.

In fact may be what you need are the IPA fonts
apt-cache search IPA  | grep -i phon
tipa - System for processing phonetic symbols in LaTeX
xfonts-intl-phonetic - International fonts for X --
Phonetic Alphabet
xfonts-tipa - X11 PostScript Type 1 font for the
Phonetic Alphabet

I looked fast in there choose Dejavu Sans and Table 2
and see the turned e - ə  (schwa)  U+0259.

Please check - if you paste 0259 in the U field and
see a square than it is a problem. 

> 
> > * any idea if the Microsoft TrueType fonts display
most of the
>  missing
> > glyphs (I used to install those, afaict, I didn't
when I installed
> > Mandriva 2006)--I'll probably try installing those
tonight or
>  tomorrow.
> 
> Before DejaVu Sans & Monospace, I used the Tahoma &
Courier New for the
> desktop. And precisely the last drop before
abandoning them for DejaVu,
>  was
> when Tahoma could not show some characters that
started to be important
>  to
> me (e.g. non-breaking hyphen). DejaVu (i.e. Vera)
and Tahoma were both
> designed as UI fonts; DejaVu is now more complete in
coverage and is
>  further
> developed, while Microsoft introduced a new,
C-series of fonts with
>  Vista,
> of which I don't know much. Of the "old guard", I've
heard Arial is
>  very
> complete too, but it wasn't exactly intended as a UI
font.
> 
> > That was apparently the problem. LANG and LC_CTYPE
were set to en_US,
>  and
> > LC_ALL was not set at all. I set LC_ALL to
en_US.UTF-8 at the command

yes en_US only means iso8859-1

> > line, then started an instance of kate, and it
works fine in this
>  respect.
> 
> Indeed, I remember KDE doing some strange stuff when
it couldn't sense
>  UTF-8
> system locale, so I tend to set these variables as a
matter of habit
> (actually, always c&p'ing my standard ~/.bashrc
cruft around :)
> 
> > your name in your native language (what language
is that) [...]
> 
> Serbian, Cyrillic script :) It's not a very good
candidate for testing
> fonts, as unless the font is specifically made to
cover a certain
>  script,
> for general fonts Cyrillic alphabet is usually the
first "extra" to go
>  in.

My KDE "speaks" Bulgarian (Cyrillic) with absolutely
no problem (I use SUSE and Debian). Since KDE 3.5 I'm
happy. It yould be really a KDE 3.4 issue. Who can
confirm this?

A bigger chellange was to configure skim for a friend
whos wife is japanese.

regards