See files .../tech/blog.txt and .../tech/vim.info. Determine encoding: file -i x # I find sometimes incorrectly reports ISO-8859's as utf-8s. "enca" or "chardet" (Python) may do a better job. Java properties and source files use ISO-8859-1, but can use Unicode escapes for characters not covered by ISO-8859-1. (Why doesn't "Java" use UTF-8, which I read is read Unicode?) Unicode escapes \uxxxx w/hex. Like \u2297 is an X in a circle. UTF-8 = unicode use 2 bytes for extended characters. vim and JavaScript latin1 = ISO-8859-1 uses 1 byte for each character. At least with Konsole default encoding set to UTF_8 Shell needs LANG set like: LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.ISO-8859-1 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 When reading text from Java, set CharSet to match encoding of the text file: UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1 vi uses lower-case #:set encoding=latin1 :set encoding=utf-8 # Unless run into some problem, always use utf-8 here :set fileencoding=latin1 :set fileencoding=utf-8 See http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html CURRENT locale: locale DEFAULT Locale: cat /etc/locale.conf OR [equivalent] localectl Available system encodings shown by "locale -a". [N.b. installing new locals is very different between ArchLinux and Rocky. See those files.] For foreign man pages, the instructions for Suse just don't work. Add the foreign man page dir to the head of the MANPATH. Set terminal emulator encoding to iso8859-1. Set LANG (or possibly LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_LANG...) to desired encoding. ENDCODING conversion: iconv -f iso-8859-1 -t utf-8 old.latin1 > new.utf8 The Suse release notes imply that ISO8859-1 is legacy. I guess UTF8 is what you should use if you need internationality. locale -a lists the locales available on UNIX Keyboard Layout switching with KDE The layout must be defined at Settings > Keyboard CTRL+Alt+K Toggle between keyboards. To view the key layouts, do ⋮ Preview, and can resize the preview. Each key square has 4 charts specified for keystroke s like: S RIGHTALT+S s RIGHTALT+s (n.b. LEFTALT+s also works for me but this is non-standard) AltGr = RIGHTALT key Keyboard Layout switching with WIndows Define layout under Settings > Time * Language > Language & Region. Add the language under Preferred languages; then WIN+SPACE Toggle between keyboards Some font families just will not display any correctly; some will not display some, and some of them won't display some reliably. Best (but still imperfect) font family but not attractive: *SimSun* on Win, FreeMono regular Linux Bad font families: Terminal, Fixedsys, Courier Following issues for these font families: Courier New, Consolas, Lucida Console, Lucida Sans, Cascadia Code, *- -+ UNRLIABLE with SimSum <7,>7 -V ?= :3 <=,>= UNRELIABLE 2/3 some fractions UNRELIABLE with all +- UNRLIABLE with xSimSum