Chinese support under english locale

[jurojon]

I am a chinese user but I prefer an english terminal/application environment.

If I select a chinese locale in KDE's "Regional&language -> Set System Language", terminal applications and firefox etc use chinese interface which I don't like (eg. GCC, apt-get etc output chinese message, ouch!). But if I set to an english locale ( en_* ), chinese character display become ugly (characters become "un-bold" (too thin) and very hard to read) and input method cannot be switched on in KDE applications even complex character input support is enabled. (but input method works in non-KDE apps).

I used to have english interface in terminal using zh_HK (Chinese Hong Kong) locale, but recently when I press "Set System Language" it asks me whether I want to install some packages, I said yes, and that may have caused the terminal apps to go chinese too.

Is there a way so that I can have good chinese display and input support, yet the applications use english interface?

Can you suggest a way so that I either:
- use an english locale while chinese support actually works, or
- use an chinese locale while terminal apps still use english message?

I use Kubuntu intrepid.

Regards

[jurojon]

Re: Chinese support under english locale

Anyone can help?

If someone can verify chinese support is broken in english locale then I should file a bug report.

[flarson]

Re: Chinese support under english locale

I think iso88591 support for larger character sets is broken, certainly in english and probably in other locales. In my Debian unstable systems I can get iso88591 to work through the entire system but when I enable it in Jaunty or Intrepid I either get unsupported characters in man pages ( lack of iso88591) or unsupported locale messages in many other situations. It seems the use of UTF-8 has not really come to Ubuntu yet.