special characters in psmap scalebar unit

[1266]

special characters are not correctly displayed for psmap module scalebar. For example: scalebar s

units kilometers ...

does not display special characters of kilom[è]tres in french.

[veroandreo]

To reproduce:

1. Go to Settings -> Preferences, under Appearance tab, set Language to French or Spanish, for example. Save and Exit GRASS.

2. Start a new GRASS session in NC location and save the following instructions in test.psmap

   # timestamp: 2019-01-07 15:24
   # location: nc_basic_spm_grass7
   # mapset: PERMANENT
   # page orientation: Portrait
   # g.region raster=elevation@PERMANENT nsres=10.0 ewres=10.0
   
   maploc 1.014 1.295  6.205 5.585
   border y
       width 1
       color black
       end
   
   paper a4
       left 0.5
       right 0.5
       bottom 1
       top 1
       end
   
   raster elevation@PERMANENT
   scalebar f
       where 5.916 7.327
       length 5.0
       units kilometers
       height 0.1
       segment 4
       numbers 1
       fontsize 10
       background y
       end
   end
   

3. Run ps.map in=test.psmap out=test.ps or load the instructions file in G7:g.gui.psmap and see the preview.

[mlennert]

Replying to 1266:

special characters are not correctly displayed for psmap module scalebar. For example: scalebar s

units kilometers ...

does not display special characters of kilom[è]tres in french.

Just guessing here, but could it be that the translated strings (po files) are in UTF-8 while ps.map expects all strings to be iso-8859-1 ? In ​do_scalebar.c there is:

193	    else if(sb.units == SB_UNITS_KM)
194	        strcpy(num, _("kilometers"));

so kilometers is translated and that's why you automatically get the non-ascii characters, but in a different encoding than the one expected.