Hello,
I have some problems on Xterminal, I'm gonna try to explain it by giving you several examples.

First, I'm french, so I use specials chars and accents like "é", "è", "ç", "ê", "ë".

By mistake, I type on the terminal (because the "é" letter is next the "m"). So I erase the "é":
It means that the "é" has not really been erased on the command line!


second test: I've erased the "é", I move the cursor left until the beginning of the line. Another problem: the cursor moves one char before the start of the command line! I've tried with two "éé", and then the cursor moves on the "$" (and far left as the number of special chars). Then I move it rightmost I obtain:
with the cursor on the second "l". (the command line has been shifted to the left...)

Another example: try to insert a "é" char at the middle of a string (I place the cursor on the "y").
(and the command line is not shifted). So, I understand that the "é" char is encoded on 2 chars...

Another test: i type a command with the "é" letter, and i move left and right. Each time the line has been shifted to the left.

The special char take 2 spaces on the line, but is printed on one box...

Does anyone has already had this problem? Does a solution exists to fix it?

I hope you understand my problem.

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2918

How can they call it fixed if it isn't fixed for the N900 nor anything before it?

FIXED in Harmattan (back when Harmattan was going to be Maemo 6). But see iDont's enhanced busybox which should contain the upstream fix.

thanks to have responded so quickly!

I've installed the last version of "busybox-power" (09/11/2011), when I launch xterminal, it prints "BusyBox v1.19.2 (Debian 1.19.2power1)" (and I can use new useful tools), but for my previous problem nothing has changed, same symptoms...

Upstream BusyBox (as can be found in busybox-power) has much improved Unicode support over the stock BusyBox. However, Unicode support is turned off by default. You can verify this by executing "echo $LANG" in your shell. If the resulting string doesn't contain UTF8, then unicode is indeed turned off.

You need to start a new shell like:
to have Unicode support enabled in the shell

Edit: since you're French, you probably want to replace en_EN with fr_FR in the code above.

Is there a way to change the default?

YESS! works perfectly

Not yet understood how the configuration works... (does this require to recompile busybox??)
Have found this http://busybox.net/FAQ.html#configure , will try tomorrow

Is there any reason this is not default? Been getting �'s in one application and this fixes it. Thanks!

You need to change the system's locale. I don't know how the set locale affects Maemo as a whole though, since it does quite a bit differently than your typical Linux distribution configuration wise. Anyway, editing /etc/osso-af-init/locale seems to do the trick. Only the line containing LANG needs to be changed in there. In my case, changing:
to
appears to work after a reboot.

The only known side effect I'm aware of is that Ctrl-Space is seen as a NULL character in the terminal, which doesn't happen when using a non-Unicode locale.

The proper fix is changing the system's locale setting. BusyBox merely respects what you've set there (launching a shell with LANG= basically overrides your default setting).

You can configure BusyBox to disrespect your system locale and force Unicode support though. To achieve this, run "apt-get source busybox-power" in Scratchbox, modify "CONFIG_FEATURE_CHECK_UNICODE_IN_ENV=y" in the two config files in debian/config/ to "CONFIG_FEATURE_CHECK_UNICODE_IN_ENV=n", and recompile busybox-power with "dpkg-buildpackage -r"fakeroot -u" -uc -us -nc"

I would encourage you to try changing your system's locale first however, rather than recompiling BusyBox with the above change. If you do want to recompile BusyBox though, feel free to contact me if you encounter any issues.

I don't know why Maemo hasn't got an UTF8 locale set by default. As to BusyBox, or any package for that matter, I prefer it to adhere the system's settings