diacritics in emacs but not in emacsclient

diacritics in emacs but not in emacsclient

[Tom Koornwinder]

From my mac, working in a console window provided by Terminal, I am used to
login by ssh on a server which is running on bash.
It has GNU Emacs 23.1.1.
In emacs windows I can produce diacritics like e accent grave or o umlaut
in the usual Mac way by the option (= alt) key:
option-` e  and option-u o.
However, when I prepare an email message in mutt in an emacs window
provided by emacsclient then I cannot produce these diacritics.
The mentioned symbols now give C( and C6 .
The same happens when I copy these (correctly displayed) symbols from
a text window and paste them in my mail window: C( and  C6 .

In my .muttrc I have the line

set editor=emacsclient

There is no improvement if, instead, I put in my .bashrc the lines

export ALTERNATE_EDITOR=""
export EDITOR=emacsclient

Does anybody know a solution?


Tom Koornwinder

Re: diacritics in emacs but not in emacsclient

[Stefan Monnier]

> From my mac, working in a console window provided by Terminal, I am used to
> login by ssh on a server which is running on bash.

What OS is the server running?  Some GNU/Linux distribution?

> It has GNU Emacs 23.1.1.

I've seen older, but it's its best years are definitely in the past ;-)

> However, when I prepare an email message in mutt in an emacs window
> provided by emacsclient then I cannot produce these diacritics.
> The mentioned symbols now give C( and C6 .

What is the locale your use on your server?  Maybe you need to tell your
server that it's running inside a utf-8 terminal (e.g. set $LANG to
something like "nl_NL.UTF-8").


        Stefan

Re: diacritics in emacs but not in emacsclient

[Bob Proulx]

Tom Koornwinder wrote:
> From my mac, working in a console window provided by Terminal, I am used to
> login by ssh on a server which is running on bash.
> It has GNU Emacs 23.1.1.

Sounds like many Debian Wheezy Stable boxes.  :-)  Of course it could
be any of many other distributions too.

> In emacs windows I can produce diacritics like e accent grave or o umlaut
> in the usual Mac way by the option (= alt) key:
> option-` e  and option-u o.

If that is produced in the terminal then it should be sent down the
ssh wire too and appear in the remote shell.  And if that works then
it should also appear in emacs.

> However, when I prepare an email message in mutt in an emacs window
> provided by emacsclient then I cannot produce these diacritics.
> The mentioned symbols now give C( and C6 .

Stefan Monnier suggested that perhaps you have not set LANG
appropriately and will need to set it to a UTF charset.  I agree.

It appears that you are using a Compose key for composing those
characters.  I wanted to suggest that you could use emacs own compose
key "C-x 8".  It provides compose key capability in emacs and dates
from before systems generally had their own Compose key defined and
therefore could work anywhere.  Please try this:

  C-x 8 ' e  produces é
  C-x 8 " o  produces ö

That is mostly for debug data collection as it provides a data point
on whether emacs can handle the characters or not.

> The same happens when I copy these (correctly displayed) symbols from
> a text window and paste them in my mail window: C( and  C6 .

Does that work locally when working on a local terminal not logged in
anywhere remotely?  Does that work when logged in remotely to the
command line shell?  Then try it into an remote shell running emacs.

If it does not work locally then it is a local localization problem.
If it works locally but not remotely then the remote terminal has a
localization problem.  If it works remotely in a terminal but not
emacs then it is an emacs problem.

Be sure to test emacs with "emacs -q" and "emacs -Q" to avoid any
possibility of local customization causing problems.

Bob

Re: diacritics in emacs but not in emacsclient

[Tom Koornwinder]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > From my mac, working in a console window provided by Terminal, I am used to
> > login by ssh on a server which is running on bash.
> 
> What OS is the server running?  Some GNU/Linux distribution?

By  uname -a   I get:
GNU/Linux 2.6.32-431.11.2.el6.x86_64

> > It has GNU Emacs 23.1.1.
> 
> I've seen older, but it's its best years are definitely in the past ;-)
> 
> > However, when I prepare an email message in mutt in an emacs window
> > provided by emacsclient then I cannot produce these diacritics.
> > The mentioned symbols now give C( and C6 .
> 
> What is the locale your use on your server?  Maybe you need to tell your
> server that it's running inside a utf-8 terminal (e.g. set $LANG to
> something like "nl_NL.UTF-8").

echo $LANG    gives:   en_US.UTF-8


     	   Tom Koornwinder

Re: diacritics in emacs but not in emacsclient

[Tom Koornwinder]

Bob Proulx wrote:
> Tom Koornwinder wrote:
> > From my mac, working in a console window provided by Terminal, I am used to
> > login by ssh on a server which is running on bash.
> > It has GNU Emacs 23.1.1.
> ...
> > In emacs windows I can produce diacritics like e accent grave or o umlaut
> > in the usual Mac way by the option (= alt) key:
> > option-` e  and option-u o.
> ...
> > However, when I prepare an email message in mutt in an emacs window
> > provided by emacsclient then I cannot produce these diacritics.
> > The mentioned symbols now give C( and C6 .
> ...
> It appears that you are using a Compose key for composing those
> characters.  I wanted to suggest that you could use emacs own compose
> key "C-x 8".  It provides compose key capability in emacs and dates
> from before systems generally had their own Compose key defined and
> therefore could work anywhere.  Please try this:
> 
>   C-x 8 ' e  produces é
>   C-x 8 " o  produces ö
> 
> That is mostly for debug data collection as it provides a data point
> on whether emacs can handle the characters or not.

Yes, producing diacritics with C-x 8 works fine in an emacs window
on the server I mentioned. However, when I try this in an emacsclient window,
coming from mutt, this produces a question mark. But when I keep a copy
of the sent mail and open this with emacs, I see the diacritical character
where I first saw the question mark.
Similarly, the receiver of the message should see the diacritical character.

> > The same happens when I copy these (correctly displayed) symbols from
> > a text window and paste them in my mail window: C( and  C6 .
> 
> Does that work locally when working on a local terminal not logged in
> anywhere remotely?  Does that work when logged in remotely to the
> command line shell?  Then try it into an remote shell running emacs.
> 
> If it does not work locally then it is a local localization problem.
> If it works locally but not remotely then the remote terminal has a
> localization problem.  If it works remotely in a terminal but not
> emacs then it is an emacs problem.

I can produce diacritical characters with the compose key on a local terminal
(Terminal on Mac) and remotely in the command line shell and remotely
in an emacs window, but not in an emacsclient wondow opened from mutt.

Tom
    

Re: diacritics in emacs but not in emacsclient

[Stefan Monnier]

> However, when I try this in an emacsclient window,
> coming from mutt, this produces a question mark.

That indicates that Emacs thinks the "output device" (i.e. the terminal
emulator) does not know this character (because the coding-system used
doesn't include this char).  It doesn't affect the buffer's content,
only the display.  But again, it indicates that Emacs doesn't think the
terminal is using utf-8.

IIUC your situation is:

  In Terminal.app, your ssh to a GNU/Linux server, and in that ssh
  session you run "emacsclient -t".

What happens if instead of "emacsclient -t" you run "emacs -nw -Q"?
Can you then enter non-ascii chars and are they displayed correctly?


        Stefan

Re: diacritics in emacs but not in emacsclient

[Tom Koornwinder]

On Thu, Jul 03, 2014 at 09:24:03AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > However, when I try this in an emacsclient window,
> > coming from mutt, this produces a question mark.
>
> That indicates that Emacs thinks the "output device" (i.e. the terminal
> emulator) does not know this character (because the coding-system used
> doesn't include this char).  It doesn't affect the buffer's content,
> only the display.  But again, it indicates that Emacs doesn't think the
> terminal is using utf-8.
>
> IIUC your situation is:
>
>   In Terminal.app, your ssh to a GNU/Linux server, and in that ssh
>   session you run "emacsclient -t".
>
> What happens if instead of "emacsclient -t" you run "emacs -nw -Q"?
> Can you then enter non-ascii chars and are they displayed correctly?

This solves my problem.
The only difference with your suggestion is that I have put in my .muttrc

set editor="emacs -nw"

(without -Q since my .emacs init file should be read)

Many thanks, Stefan.

Tom  (æmçtërdåm)

Re: diacritics in emacs but not in emacsclient

[Stefan Monnier]

>> What happens if instead of "emacsclient -t" you run "emacs -nw -Q"?
>> Can you then enter non-ascii chars and are they displayed correctly?
> This solves my problem.

OK, so "emacs -nw -Q" works, good.

> The only difference with your suggestion is that I have put in my .muttrc
> set editor="emacs -nw"

So, IIUC, "emacs -nw" also works, good.

So the remaining step is to figure out why the same fails when
connecting to an Emacs server via emacsclient.

Can you try:

- In one Terminal.app, do you ssh thing, then start "emacs -nw", then
  do M-x server-mode RET to start the Emacs server.
- In another Terminal.app, do the same ssh thing, then start
  "emacsclient -t".

If that emacsclient still lets you type in (and display) non-ascii
chars, that indicates that the problem is likely triggered by something
in your .emacs config which is only executed depending on something like
`window-system'.


        Stefan