Umlauts in a terminal

In order to successfuly use umlauts in a terminal, several settings need to be made.

  • terminal settings
  • configure german language environment
  • configure X resources

 

Under 4. all steps are summarized.

1. Terminal Settings

 

# stty cs8 istrip

 

2. Configure german language environment

 

# locale
LANG=
LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-15
LC_NUMERIC=en_US.ISO8859-15
LC_TIME=en_US.ISO8859-15
LC_COLLATE=en_US.ISO8859-15
LC_MONETARY=en_US.ISO8859-15
LC_MESSAGES=C
LC_ALL=

 

Show installed locales:

 

# locale -a | grep de
de
de.ISO8859-15
de_DE
de_DE.ISO8859-1
de_DE.ISO8859-15
de_DE.ISO8859-15@euro

 

Select locale:

 

# export LC_ALL=de

 

3. Configure xterm's X resources

 

# cat ~/.Xresources
...
xterm*eightBitOutput: true

 

merge X resource database (Note! DISPLAY variable needs to be set)

 

# /usr/openwin/bin/xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

 

4. Set (magical) with login

The following settings need to be made to your .profile (depending on your Login Shell)

 

# cat ~/.profile
...
stty -istrip cs8
LC_ALL=de
export LC_ALL

# merge settings if DISPLAY is set
[ -n "$DISPLAY" ] && /usr/openwin/bin/xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

 

Alternatively:

 

vi /usr/openwin/lib/X11/app-defaults/XTerm
xterm*eightBitOutput: true

 

5. Test your settings

With above mentioned settings start an xterm and test your "äüöß" keys.