i'm not sure this is the proper area for this... if it is not, please point me to the proper list...

i've a ubuntu system that i'm trying to run fp on... X does *not* start automatically... i'm working from the virtual console(s) 99% of the time... what i'm seeing and trying to solve is the frames in fp are showing up as diamond characters... after i got the help stuff loading properly, i noted that when i switched away from the editor frame, it showed the single line frame characters and the help frame was all diamonds... closing the help and returning to the editor switched the editor frame back to diamonds...

i found the document in the share directory that speaks of /etc/syscontrol/console but my ubuntu system doesn't have such... i did find something online where i was able to change my console font from VGA to Terminus and a few others but none of them have helped...

in the above mentioned document, it also speaks of the grab_vcsa tool... i tried linking this from my ~/development (created by fpcup) but ended up having to actually copy the binary to /usr/local/bin (in my path and where i selected to place it) and then set it to owner:group root... i also set the SUID bit as the document mentions but even this has not helped...

looking at my freepascal installs on my winwhatever and OS/2 machines, i see that the frame is normally the double line frame characters and that it does switch to the single line frame characters when selecting another window in fp...

TERM=linux
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

1. what am i missing to solve this?

2. will fixing this in the console cause problems when i do run the X GUI and open a xterm (or other) console so as to be able to work from the command line?

thanks for any assistance! :)

This is easy to fix : the encoding of your remote shell is set wrong. If you use PuTTY, go to "Window|Translations|Remote Character set" and set to UTF8.
Then go to session and save! it.

Other remote shells should have similar options.

Thaddy

There might be something related to the locale command relevant to this. As a quick test I've just fired up fp on a Debian (non-x86) console and framing etc. was OK, I see LANG set to en_GB.UTF-8

I'm uneasy about things like console and X codepages, and the corresponding keyboard mappings. One problem is that when they're changed they tend to be system-wide, another is that things like available founts and codepages can depend on how much of X11 has been installed. Put another way, your console might be broken /because/ X isn't installed, not /despite/ it.

Thaddy wrote

This is easy to fix : the encoding of your remote shell is set wrong. If you use

sorry but there is no remote shell... this is sitting at the local console with no X running...

thanks for the thought, though ;)

yeah, i'm in the US... i did post the two settings i saw from the environment that i thought were important... what other environment settings may affect this?

actually, X is installed but not running... i'm on tty1 - tty6... if i type "startx" then X starts up but the machine only has 512M RAM and cannot handle any more... i had 768M in it and on boot it says that 512M is the max so i pulled the other 256M and put it to use elsewhere... with only 512M of RAM, it is slower than molasses in mid-winter :( so, i use the plain non-GUI local console for most work i do on it...

Frankly, I don't know. I do a lot of shell stuff, but it's almost always within Konsole (on KDE, Xfce etc.) and often over ssh since this combination gives me cut-and-paste etc.

Try using Xfce or another "lightweight" desktop, and try using a non-composting UI (the poor performance might be because your 3D acceleration isn't working).

In our previous episode, waldo kitty said:

Set encoding to cp437 or run ./fp -F

yeah, i wasn't too worried about that at this point... however, in the interest of testing, i connected from a different machine via ssh and the double-line frame characters are showing up properly... this time, TERM is "xterm" instead of "linux" as on the local console... hummm... perhaps it is just a matter of changing the local console's TERM to "xterm"? i dunno (yet)... there's certainly on X running at this time ;)

i think konsole is the terminal app i use when in X but don't recall at the moment without going to that area and looking... which ever one it is that i use, it is available in all installs since the 90s or so and the one i've always used...

but i'm still wanting to solve this on the local console since that's where i spend most of my time when i'm in the operations area...

i've tried other GUIs but didn't like them for various reasons... mainly being able to easily configure them which is why i've stuck with KDE all these years... i'll have to try Xfce or similar again and see if they are easier to configure and "right click, add shortcut" type stuffs...

i don't have an option to choose CP437 when i run

dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

i've also tried ./fp -F to no avail...

could it be because the local console is "TERM=linux"?? when i ssh in, TERM is "xterm" and the double-line frame characters are displaying correctly...

Generally, TERM is the setting you want. I generally do an export TERM=vt100
in my .profile file, and all is as it should be.
You could of course substitute any value of your choice, but I find vt100 is the lowest common demonitor, and it works everywhere and with everything.
If your .profile doesn't get used, then you can put the command in your .bashrc file as well.
I have a similar setup to you, 768MB of ram is the max in this old pentium machine, I've opted to leave the 768MB in though, and installed slackware on it, it sees and uses all the memory, and it works much better than it did with the 512 it had prior. I have two ubuntu machines too, but those do use x (to varying degrees) though most of my ork is done at the terminal prompt, usually via ssh from my mac.
Fpc works well in all these environments.
And, remember, case is important when exporting session variables.