PBM: special characters in UTF8 man pages [SOLVED]

[VinzC]

Hi.

I've been having this issue for as long as I've been using Gentoo. My locale is fr_BE.UTF-8 and some man pages written in French are wrongly displayed. It's especially true with UTF-8 man pages, like this one:

Code: Select all

.\" synced with r30135
.\" MPlayer (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
.\" The English man page was/is done by Gabucino, Diego Biurrun, Jonas Jermann
.\" Traduction: Guillaume POIRIER < poirierg AT gmail POINT com >,
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------------
.\" Définition des macros
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------------
.
.\" Définit l'indentation pour les sous-options
.nr SS 4
.\"
.de IPs
.IP "\\$1" \n(SS
..
.\" début du premier niveau des sous-options, se termine par .RE
.de RSs
.RS 10
..
.\" début du 2nd niveau des sous-options
.de RSss
.PD 0
.RS \n(SS+3
..
.\" fin du 2nd niveau des sous-options
.de REss
.RE
.PD 1
..
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------------
.\" Titre
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------------
.
.TH MPlayer 1 "27 avril 2009" "The MPlayer Project" "Le Lecteur Vidéo"
.
.SH NAME
mplayer  \- Lecteur vidéo
.br
mencoder \- Encodeur vidéo
.
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------------
.\" Synopsis
.\" --------------------------------------------------------------------------
.
.SH SYNOPSIS
.na
.nh
.B mplayer
[options] [fichier|URL|liste de lecture |\-]
.
.br
.B mplayer
[options] fichier1
[options spécifiques] [fichier2] [options spécifiques]
.
.br
.B mplayer
[options]
{ "groupe de fichiers et d'options" }
[options spécifiques au groupe]
.
.br
.B mplayer
[dvd|dvdnav]://[titre|[titre_de_début]\-titre_de_fin ][/périphérique]
[options]
.
.br
.B mplayer
vcd://piste[/périphérique]
[options]
.
.br
.B mplayer
tv://[chaîne][/identifiant de l'entrée]
[options]
.
.br
.B mplayer
radio://[chaîne|fréquence][/capture]
[options]
.
.br
.B mplayer
pvr://
[options]
.
.br
.B mplayer
dvb://[numero_de_carte@]canal
[options]
.
.br
.B mplayer
mf://[masque de fichier|@liste de fichiers]
[options \-mf] [options]
.
.br
.B mplayer
[cdda|cddb]://piste[\-piste_de_fin][:vitesse][/périphérique]
[options]
.
.br
.B mplayer
cue://fichier[:piste]
[options]
.
.br
.B mplayer
[file|mms[t]|http|http_proxy|rt[s]p|ftp|udp|unsv|icyx|noicyx|smb]://
[utilisateur:mot_de_passe@]URL[:port] [options]
...

shows like

Code: Select all

NAME
       mplayer  - Lecteur vidéo
       mencoder - Encodeur vidéo

SYNOPSIS
       mplayer [options] [fichier|URL|liste de lecture |-]
       mplayer [options] fichier1 [options spécifiques] [fichier2] [options
       spécifiques]
       mplayer [options] { "groupe de fichiers et d'options" } [options
       spécifiques au groupe]
       mplayer [dvd|dvdnav]://[titre|[titre_de_début]-titre_de_fin
       ][/périphérique] [options]
       mplayer vcd://piste[/périphérique] [options]
       mplayer tv://[chaîne][/identifiant de l'entrée] [options]
       mplayer radio://[chaîne|fréquence][/capture] [options]
       mplayer pvr:// [options]
       mplayer dvb://[numero_de_carte@]canal [options]
       mplayer mf://[masque de fichier|@liste de fichiers] [options -mf]
       [options]
       mplayer [cdda|cddb]://piste[-piste_de_fin][:vitesse][/périphérique]
       [options]
       mplayer cue://fichier[:piste] [options]
...

The source file is indeed UTF8 but somewhere something between grotty, gtbl, nroff, groff, troff, poff, moff, boff, zoff, floff and wtfoff that shows it as if it were ASCII instead. I've checked Gentoo wiki about man and UTF8 but man.conf already has the described shape.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance for any hint/suggestion.

[Dominique_71]

Hi,

After trying everything, inclusive from that thread, buzz22 solution is working for me: groff-utf8.

[VinzC]

Thanks a lot Dominique_71!

I'll try this and report. (I expect it to work as it did for you.) I'm just surprised groff (since it's the one pointed at) still doesn't process UTF8 properly after all those years.

Of course this is only a stopgap measure, until groff can process UTF-8 encoded man pages by itself, sometime in the future.
[...]
Last modified: 5 July 2005.

File a bug?

EDIT: Works like a charm! Thanks a bunch again!

[VinzC]

Unfortunately, it was too good to be true . Thought it was solved for good but I just ran into the same issue *sighs* AGAIN *sighs*

I checked the tarball and it installs groff-utf8 in /usr/local/bin, which is fine for me. I then edited /etc/man.conf as follows:

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TROFF           /usr/local/bin/groff-utf8 -Tps -mandoc
NROFF           /usr/bin/nroff -mandoc
JNROFF          /usr/local/bin/groff-utf8 -Tnippon -mandocj

I then ran emerge mplayer again and man pages STILL contain that UTF/ASCII garbage . Now I'm definitely at my wit's ends. Need help.

EDIT: My bad, forgot to change the NROFF line too:

Code: Select all

TROFF           /usr/local/bin/groff-utf8 -Tps -mandoc
NROFF           /usr/local/bin/groff-utf8 -Tutf8 -mandoc
JNROFF          /usr/local/bin/groff-utf8 -Tnippon -mandocj

Now it works again.

[r90]

A little late, but the answer is:

Code: Select all

NROFF		/usr/bin/groff -mandoc -Tutf8 -k

Note of using groff, not the nroff stupid script. Seems that without -k groff making something horrible with charset. I don't know what, but I can guess, that groff silently assume that input is latin1.

[VinzC]

Ah... that explains why it didn't work in the first place. I tried groff-utf8 in despair so, thanks a lot for sharing .