[Konsole-devel] Bug#46781: konsole reverts hebrew text

[kellner at fsmat.htu.tuwien.ac.at]

Package: konsole
Version: 1.1 (using KDE 3.0.0 )
Severity: wishlist
Installed from:    RedHat RPMs
Compiler:          Not Specified
OS:                Linux
OS/Compiler notes: Not Specified

Hi!

I suppose it's a feature, not a bug, but still
it is pretty annoying:

I am using redhat 7.3
(kde: rpm package version kdebase-3.0.0-12, i.e. KDE 3.0.0-10, konsole version 1.1)

When I set the locale to he_IL, I have the following effect in konsole:
1) the input of (unicode, I suppose) hebrew is
   translated to ISO 8859-8 byte values, 
   which is good.
2) the (ISO 8859-8) output of the program 
   running in konsole is
   displayed in hebrew characters, 
   which is good.
3) if a program writes a line consisting of 
   non-ascii bytes, then
   the output is reverted by konsole (and 
   sometimes right-aligned),
   which is _extremely annoying_.

If I use e.g. pine to display a hebrew mail (which is encoded visually,
according to  RFC 1555), or use vim -H to edit a ISO 8859-8 encoded file, this
bidi-feature srews up horribly.

Btw, I assume this revert is done by konsole and not by bash, vim, pine or
whatever since erverything works nicely in an xterm with ISO 8859-8 hebrew
font, independent of locale setting.

I have to say that I think this feature is a bit strange anyway - my feeling
would be that the bidi-interpretation is a task of the client (e.g. vim), not
the terminal emulation.

So my question:
a) Is my description/interpretation of the problem accurate?
b) Is there a configuration setting to disable "bidi-interpretation" in
konsole? Or would I have to patch sources :-( ?
c) alternatively, is there a way to turn a font containing hebrew characters
   (e.g. a unicode font) into a "mock-latin-1" font where the latin1
   symbols are substituted with the according hebrew characters?
   (Of course, then the normal hebrew keyboard or cut and paste of hebrew
   unicode characters wouldn't work any more)

A question related to c): I have never been able to use any
of my additional hebrew 8859-8 fonts in konsole - they do not
appear in the font selection list (they do, however, appear in
the KDE control-center fontselection list). Is there a special
property a font has to have so that it can be used in konsole?
(The font in questio is a fixed width font and works with xterm
without problems).


(Submitted via bugs.kde.org)


(Complete bug history is available at http://bugs.kde.org/db/46/46781.html)