Missing Umlauts and special characters / SuSEconfig errors

Support knowledgebase (umlaute_gettext)
Applies to

SuSE Linux: Version 8.0

Symptom 1:

No Umlauts or other special characters in applications that use gettext.

Instead, you see \123\456\789\ character strings.

Symptom 2:

SuSEconfig issues error messages like this:
Executing /sbin/conf.d/SuSEconfig.susewm...
ERROR: UTF-8->ISO-8859-1 encoding conversation is not supported by iconv
ERROR: UTF-8->ISO-8859-2 encoding conversation is not supported by iconv
...

Cause:

You have installed the "minimal selection", and no the package glibc-locale ist not installed.

Another possible cause is that you did an update from 7.2 or 7.3, and glibc-locale as a new subpackage of the glibc package has not been installed with the update.

Solution:

Install the glibc-locale package.
Keywords: UMLAUTS GETTEXT MUTT GLIBC-LOCALE SPECIAL CHARACTERS CHARS SUSECONFIG SUSEWM ENCODING CONVERSATION ICONV

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SDB-umlaute_gettext, Copyright SuSE Linux AG, Nürnberg, Germany - Version: 13. Aug 2002
SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 13. Aug 2002 by poeml (sdb_gen 1.40.0)