Hi!

Georges Heinsch <ghmlist@ibm.net> wrote:
>Why does xterm not show/accept Umlaute?
[..]
>What can I do now to make them usable during normal operation (e.g.
>when hitting Umlauts when sh/tcsh is running, with vi, ...)?

tcsh has to be compiled with 8-Bit cleanness and Native Language
System support options enabled.  You can check this by entering:

    echo $version

On the Sparc system I'm working right now I get the response:

tcsh 6.07.02 (Astron) 1996-10-27 (sparc-sun-solaris) options 8b,nls,rh,nd

Where 8b and nls indicate that the aforementioned options are
set for me.  Your output will differ from mine, but as long as
the options are the same it will do.

To cite from the tcsh manual page:

   "When using the system's NLS, the  setlocale(3)  function  is
    called to determine appropriate character classification and
    sorting.  This function  typically  examines  the  LANG  and
    LC_CTYPE environment variables; refer to the system documen-
    tation for further details."

I have to check this for NetBSD when I'm at home but on my Sun
running Solaris 2.6 it is sufficient to enter

    setenv LANG de

and umlauted chars are accepted and printed in the shell. "de" is
for "deutsch" (german), adjust as necessary for your preferred
locale.

If either of the options 8b or nls is missing, you're not
completely out of luck, but it might cost you some time (and
coffee and sweat and nerves and more coffee :-).  Extract the
source for tcsh, work through the installation documentation,
set the options and recompile...

I know this is a little thin on my part but I never did this
for tcsh myself.

Vi also uses NLS if I remember right.  Simply setting $LANG
to "de" does the job for vi, too.

Yours,

   Michael B"ohnisch
            ^
            | with an umlauted o :-)