[MacPorts] #26017: aqualess-1.6 AquaLess.app ignores set UTF-8 locale and thus does not display correctly UTF-8 encoded text

9 Aug 2010

      #26017: aqualess-1.6 AquaLess.app ignores set UTF-8 locale and thus does not
display correctly UTF-8 encoded text
-----------------------------------+----------------------------------------
 Reporter:  Torsten.Maehne@…       |       Owner:  macports-tickets@…                   
     Type:  defect                 |      Status:  new                                  
 Priority:  Normal                 |   Milestone:                                       
Component:  ports                  |     Version:  1.9.1                                
 Keywords:  UTF-8, locale          |        Port:  aqualess                             
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 {{{AquaLess.app}}} seems to ignore a set UTF-8 locale thus displaying
 incorrectly text containing umlauts and other special characters received
 via aless from the command line.

 I set-up my Mac OS X 10.6.4 to use the {{{de_CH.UTF-8}}} locale in the
 terminal via the {{{LANG}}} and {{{LC_ALL}}} environment variables. All
 command line tools (e.g., {{{svn}}}, {{{gcc}}}, {{{man}}}, {{{less}}},
 {{{locale}}}) correctly take the locale with the specified text encoding
 into account, but {{{AquaLess.app}}} launched via {{{aless}}} seems to
 ignore this locale. {{{AquaLess.app}}} seems to take only into account the
 region specified under "Formats" in the "Language and Text" pane of the
 system preferences, which in turn seems to set just a "de_CH", "en_US",
 etc. locale without ".UTF-8" suffix.

 I was not able to find a solution for this problem by searching the web,
 but only hints that it matters where the environment variables are set. I
 have tried all possibles I found, namely:

 1. Specifying the environment variables on the command line for the
 current shell:
 {{{
 $ export LANG=de_CH.UTF-8
 $ export LC_ALL=de_CH.UTF-8
 }}}

 2. Specifying the environment variables in
 {{{~/.MacOSX/environment.plist}}}

 3. Specifying the environment variables in {{{/etc/launchd.conf}}}

 The effect was always the same: The locale with text encoding is set
 correctly in the shell of {{{iTerm.app}}} and {{{Terminal.app}}}, but
 {{{AquaLess.app}}} is ignoring the specified text encoding.

 To verify this wrong behaviour in {{{AquaLess.app}}}, it suffices to
 execute the following commands from a Bash shell in {{{Terminal.app}}}

 {{{
 $ export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 $ export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
 }}}

 Then less correctly displays a string containing umlauts and other special
 characters:
 {{{
 $ echo "öäüéàè\`¿´^'ç°" | less
 }}}

 However, {{{AquaLess.app}}} fails for the same string:
 {{{
 $ echo "öäüéàè\`¿´^'ç°" | aless
 }}}

 {{{aless}}} should either forward the text encoding used in the terminal
 or {{{AquaLess.app}}} should provide in its Preferences pane a setting to
 configure the text encoding.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/26017>
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