pkg/46527: x11/mlterm UTF8 support not working

[mayuresh%acm.org@localhost]

>Number:         46527
>Category:       pkg
>Synopsis:       x11/mlterm UTF8 support not working
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    pkg-manager
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Sun Jun 03 03:05:00 +0000 2012
>Originator:     Mayuresh
>Release:        6.0_BETA2
>Organization:
>Environment:
NetBSD laptop 6.0_BETA2 NetBSD 6.0_BETA2 (GENERIC) i386
>Description:
Have been trying to make Devanagari (UTF8) fonts work on NetBSD with mlterm.

The issue has been discussed at length on upstream mailing list here:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.terminal-emulators.mlterm.devel/772

Since they don't find any problem after all environment checks they suggested 
on above thread, the problem may be specific to NetBSD.
>How-To-Repeat:
Try running mlterm and try rendering contents with Devanagari script.

May be copy paste the following text in terminal:

देवनागरी

If you just see # or * character etc. it's not rendered properly.

Assuming you don't have familiarity with devnagari, cross check what you see 
with how above word is rendered in a web browser that supports UTF8. (The word 
is "Devanagari" itself.)


>Fix:
Not known, not known to upstream either as per cited mail thread.

Also suggest alternative terminals:

rxvt-unicode doesn't work either and its own documentation advises mlterm for 
Devanagari.

konsole: Unable to try due to build issues with kde 4 as of now

gnome-terminal: Crashes on NetBSD 6

Also, in Linux world both konsole and gnome-terminal are known to work only 
partly for Devanagari.