We've created enhancement bug 2791 [0] to address this, and included
some of the discussion from the list. I agree that ASCII-only is an
untenable solution for modern software, and would like to work towards
proper UTF8 support[1].
Slurm is (mostly) UTF8 compatible. This is why the umlaut in Schrödinger
is printed correctly.
There are two issues that I plan to address in a future release:
1) Preventing the output routines from splitting in the middle of a
multi-byte UTF8 character. Right now, 'squeue' and other commands may
truncate a string in the middle of a multi-byte UTF8 character which
results in garbage (usually little rectangles) instead of appropriate
characters printed to the screen.
2) Terminal output width calculation for arbitrary UTF8 strings. This is
the original reported issue - multi-byte Unicode characters have their
widths miscalculated which throws the justification off making the
terminal output 'ugly'.
A further issue that I do not currently plan to address is normalization
of arbitrary strings[2]. Right now, 'Schrödinger' (umlaut) and
'Schrodinger' (no umlaut) are treated as separate accounts, which could
cause some confusion.
- Tim
[0] https://bugs.schedmd.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2791
[1] http://utf8everywhere.org/
[2] http://unicode.org/faq/normalization.html
--
Tim Wickberg
Director of Support, SchedMD LLC
Commercial Slurm Development and Support
