Unicode

Question/Problem: Are you having problems with character encodings?

Answer/Fix: Try using Unicode/UTF-8.

Commandline programs

Localized characters doesn't display correctly in irssi, nano etc (they are replaced with question marks, squares or something similar.)

Solution:

Write this command at the shell prompt (you don't need to do this if you already choose UTF-8 in the shell setup):

echo 'export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"' >> ~/.profile

Next time you log in your shell will be in unicode.

For irssi, see FAQ/IrssiCharset.

Problem #2 - Webpages

Characters in webpages doesn't display correctly.

Solution:

Save the webpages in UTF-8 from your text-editor. Then create a new file named .htaccess in the same directory as your webpages (public_html) with the following content:

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

See Also

• UTF in irssi

• CategoryFAQ