I can't visualize any file in the Emacs

I can't visualize any file in the Emacs

[Amanda Ortega]

Hi, I'm starting to use Emacs, but I can't visualize any file. I only can see
small squares where it would have to be chars (letters, numbers, etc). I
don't know what to do. Do I have to install any other package? I have
installed these packages until now:

emacs21
emacs21-bin-common
emacs21-common
emacsen-common

Thanks,
Amanda
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Re: I can't visualize any file in the Emacs

[Eric Hanchrow]

>>>>> "Amanda" == Amanda Ortega <amandaortega@gmail.com> writes:

    Amanda> I only can see small squares where it would have to
    Amanda> be chars (letters, numbers, etc).

>From the file .../etc/PROBLEMS:

    ** Under X11, some characters appear as hollow boxes.

    Each X11 font covers just a fraction of the characters that Emacs
    supports.  To display the whole range of Emacs characters requires
    many different fonts, collected into a fontset.

    If some of the fonts called for in your fontset do not exist on your X
    server, then the characters that have no font appear as hollow boxes.
    You can remedy the problem by installing additional fonts.

    The intlfonts distribution includes a full spectrum of fonts that can
    display all the characters Emacs supports.  The etl-unicode collection
    of fonts (available from <URL:ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/fonts/> and
    <URL:ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/mirror/X.Org/contrib/fonts/>) includes
    fonts that can display many Unicode characters; they can also be used
    by ps-print and ps-mule to print Unicode characters.

    Another cause of this for specific characters is fonts which have a
    missing glyph and no default character.  This is known to occur for
    character number 160 (no-break space) in some fonts, such as Lucida
    but Emacs sets the display table for the unibyte and Latin-1 version
    of this character to display a space.


-- 
I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent
life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out
sex.
        -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Re: I can't visualize any file in the Emacs

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 05:57:50 -0800 (PST), Amanda Ortega <amandaortega@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I'm starting to use Emacs, but I can't visualize any file. I only can see
> small squares where it would have to be chars (letters, numbers, etc). I
> don't know what to do. Do I have to install any other package? I have
> installed these packages until now:

This usually means that two things are happening:

  * You are starting Emacs with a locale/language-environment XX

  * You are using a default font for Emacs which cannot display
    characters in the XX encoding.

How are you starting Emacs?  What is your default language environment?

Re: I can't visualize any file in the Emacs

[Amanda Ortega]

I was starting emacs typing only "emacs" at the konsole. Now I discovered
that if I type "emacs -fn fontset-standard" I can see the chars correctly.
Now I want to know where I can configure to start emacs always with this
fontset.


Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 05:57:50 -0800 (PST), Amanda Ortega
> <amandaortega@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi, I'm starting to use Emacs, but I can't visualize any file. I only can
>> see
>> small squares where it would have to be chars (letters, numbers, etc). I
>> don't know what to do. Do I have to install any other package? I have
>> installed these packages until now:
> 
> This usually means that two things are happening:
> 
>   * You are starting Emacs with a locale/language-environment XX
> 
>   * You are using a default font for Emacs which cannot display
>     characters in the XX encoding.
> 
> How are you starting Emacs?  What is your default language environment?
> 
> _______________________________________________
> help-gnu-emacs mailing list
> help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gnu-emacs
> 
> 

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Re: I can't visualize any file in the Emacs

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 30.01.2007 um 12:21 schrieb Amanda Ortega:

> I was starting emacs typing only "emacs" at the konsole. Now I  
> discovered
> that if I type "emacs -fn fontset-standard" I can see the chars  
> correctly.
> Now I want to know where I can configure to start emacs always with  
> this
> fontset.
>

         (setq default-frame-alist '(
;          (background-color     . "ghost white")
;          (foreground-color     . "grey10")
;          (cursor-color         . "purple")
;          (cursor-type          . box)
;          (vertical-scroll-bars . left)
           (font . "fontset-standard")))

--
Greetings

   Pete

A child of five could understand this!  Fetch me a child of five.

Re: I can't visualize any file in the Emacs

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:21:21 -0800 (PST), Amanda Ortega <amandaortega@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was starting emacs typing only "emacs" at the konsole. Now I
> discovered that if I type "emacs -fn fontset-standard" I can see the
> chars correctly.  Now I want to know where I can configure to start
> emacs always with this fontset.

I'm not sure.  I usually run Emacs with `emacs -nw' inside xterm
windows.

The Emacs manual has a section on `Fontsets', which may be of
some help.  You can reach this section by typing:

  C-h r m Fontsets RET

If I am reading this section correctly, and you are running Emacs
in X11, you can add something like the following to your
`~/.Xresources' file:

  Emacs*font: fontset-standard

Then you can 'refresh' the X11 resource list by opening a shell
window, and typing:

  bash$ xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

After this has completed successfully, new Emacs windows will use
the correct fontset.

Re: I can't visualize any file in the Emacs

[Robert Thorpe]

On Jan 29, 1:57 pm, Amanda Ortega <amandaort...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I'm starting to use Emacs, but I can't visualize any file. I only can see
> small squares where it would have to be chars (letters, numbers, etc). I
> don't know what to do. Do I have to install any other package? I have
> installed these packages until now:
>
> emacs21
> emacs21-bin-common
> emacs21-common
> emacsen-common

Normally Emacs should work out of the box without doing this for any 
sensible character-set.  But there seems to be a bug in the packaging 
of some distros, especially Debian and Ubuntu.  I think that you are 
seeing the effects of this bug, though I can't be sure.

See the Debian bug
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=352811 and the Ubuntu 
bug https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/53038 .
There has been quite a lot of discussion about where to best fix it.  
See the threads for details.

It affects every part of X on the relevant distributions.  Type 
"xfontsel" to see what I mean.
The problem is fonts used to be in /usr/share/X11/fonts/ now they are 
in /usr/share/fonts/X11/, the config file xorg.conf was not updated to 
reflect this change.

Dave Love wrote a patch to fix it:
http://librarian.launchpad.net/4860914/diff