Character encoding - ArchWiki

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Character encoding is the process of interpreting bytes to readable characters. UTF-8 is the dominant encoding since 2009 and is promoted as a de-facto standard [1].

## UTF-8

### Terminal

The following lists some terminals that support UTF-8:

- gnustep-terminal
- konsole
- mlterm
- rxvt-unicode
- st
- VTE-based terminals
- xterm - Run with the argument `-u8` or configure resource `xterm*utf8: 2`.

#### Gnome-terminal or rxvt-unicode

You need to launch these applications from a UTF-8 locale or they will drop UTF-8 support. Enable the `en_US.UTF-8` locale (or your local UTF-8 alternative) per the instructions above and set it as the default locale, then reboot.

## Troubleshooting

This article or section is a candidate for merging with Localization/Simplified Chinese#Garbled problem.

Notes: The mentioned encoding at #Incorrect encoding for extracted files is chinese-specific, having a dedicated section for a single line about mp3unicode does not seem adequate, the whole section should be merged there. (Discuss in Talk:Character encoding)

- Use mp3unicode for fixing encoding problems with mp3 files.

### Incorrect encoding for extracted files

Old versions of Windows (XP, Vista, and 7) use different encoding for the content of compressed files. To unzip use the command:

    $ unzip -O CP936 file.zip

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