I am having a problem similar to Mashiah Davisons.

I am Using http://vandyke.com/ SecureCRT which usually worked fine for me. (I would like to give putty a test run, but it does not log me in, see separate message, "Key poblem logging in with putty")

My problems are currently related to interwiki.py - a python program dealing with links between languages. It is: A - reporting page titles in various languages/scripts, and B - requiring command line parameters, and interactive responses, in UTF-8 encoding

Problem Group A - messages: --------------------------- Messages do strange things to the terminal emulation, e.g. they display garbage, scroll backwards, suppress output, trigger an automated response (you can never type a correct answer to a prompt, when the backspace key has been redefined at the same time, too) etc. I tried every terminal emulation, SecureSCT has to offer, I tried with and without UTF-8 enabled. Results varied slightly, but the general behaviour remains - it's not usable.

Solution 1: ---------- I pipe messages into a file which I read over the web with a web brouser. When the web server is instructed to tell that it sends UTF-8, everything is marvellous. Drawbacks: huge overhead, rather time consuming, pretty unsuited for hihgly interactive tasks. While I can read <g!> every foreign script, and copy it locally, I cannot paste it back to the toolserver.

Solution 2: ---------- I tried to alter Linux terminal type settings, and other such settings. I have not found any of general usefulness, but some allow 'some' operability at times. My knowledge and experience in this field is, however, very limited. I would like to find a reference + tutorial on character encodig issues and settings under Linux / bash, so as to understand the logic at work, but could not find any yet. (-: neither logic, nor tutorial, that is :-)

Problem Group B - interactive input, and command lines. ------------------------------------------------------- In short: with the SecureCRT Terminal set to UTF-8, you can successfull copy and paste "some" (i.e. few) national characters into command lines (luckily, the lower case German Umlauts are among them, which I need often) but you cannot use bashs line editing tool when you have exotic characters in a line buffer.

Everything else usually does not work; results are unpredictable.

Solution 0: Avoid interactivity entierly. Find the needed strings somewhere, and pipe them into files where they do what you need. When editing is unavoidable, scp your data elsewhere, edit e.g. under Windows, which is bad enough, and scp the result back.

Obviously, this is not a solution.

Summary: -------- :-(

Purodha