01006: Graphic, termcap, Font and attribute issues with RedHat Linux 8

Title:

Graphic, termcap, Font and attribute issues with RedHat Linux 8

Description:

A number of issues have been reported with RedHat Linux 8 that pertain to graphics characters used in drawing boxes, and the character attributes such as Stand Out mode (dim/bright). 

The issue is related to the new unicode fond (UTF-8) as the default Linux console character set.

Resolution:

On RedHad Linux 8.0, the console now uses a new UNICODE font (UTF-8) as the default Linux console character set. This causes the line-draw characters to not display properly when using the termcap file provided by BASIS. This termcap file works correctly in RedHat Linux 7.1. 

This character set displays the graphics characters used when drawing a ‘BOX’ as letters instead of “-” and “|”. Bold characters are no longer displayed correctly. 

First, edit the BASIS user’s /home/username/.bash_profile (where “username” is replaced with the user’s account/login name) so that when the user logs in, a special escape code “echo -e \\033%@” is sent to the console screen before BASIS starts up. An example excerpt from the new .bash_profile follows: 

>TERMCAP=/u/bbx/pro5/termcap 
>export TERMCAP 
># set the linux console to use default character set (ISO 646/ISO 8859-1) 
>echo -e \\033%@ 
>/u/bbx/pro5/pro5 -q -m1024 starting_program_name 

The box is now drawn with a continuous line when the ‘BOX’ mnemonic is printed to the Linux console, 

Next, change the default language in /etc/sysconfig/i18n, as below, from en_US.UTF-8 to en_US:en, 

#LANG=”en_US.UTF-8″ 
LANG=”en_US:en” 

And last, use the following command: 

setfont 

The setfont command turns off unicode and allows “bold” (or the brightening of characters) to function in BASIS products again. This command seems to change every console screen which is currently open (logged into), until those screens are exited and re-logged in. 

It can in some cases cause another screen (which for example may have a man page already displayed on it) to change some of the characters to “unreadable” line drawing characters (which can be fixed by doing a Ctrl-L on that screen). You can also add ‘setfont’ to the users /home/username/.bash_profile so that when the user logs in setfont is set. 

Last Modified: 03/10/2003 Product: PRO/5 Operating System: UNIX Linux

BASIS structures five components of their technology into the BBx Generations.