On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 02:35:10AM +0800, Paul Wise <[email protected]> was heard to say: > The long description of deja-dup begins with "Déjà Dup", but the text > user interface for aptitude truncates the long description at the > accented e, causing it to show only "D" as the deja-dup package > description. The description is composed of valid UTF-8 AFAICT and I > have no problems viewing the accented e in the Packages file in the same > gnome-terminal using less.
This didn't happen in en_US.UTF-8 for me, but it did happen in en_AU.UTF-8. I didn't have locale data for en_AU; when I ran "dpkg-reconfigure locales" and generated some, I suddenly could see the whole description. This affects all frontends. The cause of the string truncation appears to be that when I invoke the apt routine to retrieve the long description, it "helpfully" transcodes the string for me into the current charset, which nl_langinfo() reports as ANSI_X3.4-1968. Unfortunately, it does so using a simple-to-use function which truncates the string at the first error. aptitude would replace untranslatable characters with question marks, but it never gets to see the full string. "less" probably works because it just dumps the raw data to standard output without checking what charset the current locale says to use. That's my guess, anyway. You particular case is probably due to having screwed up locale data (run "dpkg-reconfigure locales" and enable your locale). However, this is IMO poor behavior on apt's part -- you'll see the same thing on a system running in an ASCII locale, for instance. I'll reassign the bug over there. Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
