Provided by: x11-utils_7.7+5_amd64 bug

NAME

       luit - Locale and ISO 2022 support for Unicode terminals

SYNOPSIS

       luit [ options ] [ -- ] [ program [ args ] ]

DESCRIPTION

       Luit  is  a  filter  that can be run between an arbitrary application and a UTF-8 terminal
       emulator.  It will convert application output from the locale's encoding into  UTF-8,  and
       convert terminal input from UTF-8 into the locale's encoding.

       An  application  may  also request switching to a different output encoding using ISO 2022
       and  ISO 6429  escape  sequences.   Use  of  this  feature  is  discouraged:  multilingual
       applications should be modified to directly generate UTF-8 instead.

       Luit  is  usually  invoked  transparently by the terminal emulator.  For information about
       running luit from the command line, see EXAMPLES below.

OPTIONS

       -h     Display some summary help and quit.

       -list  List the supported charsets and encodings, then quit.

       -V     Print luit's version and quit.

       -v     Be verbose.

       -c     Function as a simple converter from standard input to standard output.

       -p     In startup, establish a handshake between parent  and  child  processes.   This  is
              needed for some systems, e.g., FreeBSD.

       -x     Exit as soon as the child dies.  This may cause luit to lose data at the end of the
              child's output.

       -argv0 name
              Set the child's name (as passed in argv[0]).

       -encoding encoding
              Set up luit to use encoding rather than the current locale's encoding.

       +oss   Disable interpretation of single shifts in application output.

       +ols   Disable interpretation of locking shifts in application output.

       +osl   Disable interpretation of character set selection sequences in application output.

       +ot    Disable interpretation of all sequences  and  pass  all  sequences  in  application
              output to the terminal unchanged.  This may lead to interesting results.

       -k7    Generate seven-bit characters for keyboard input.

       +kss   Disable generation of single-shifts for keyboard input.

       +kssgr Use  GL  codes  after  a single shift for keyboard input.  By default, GR codes are
              generated after a single shift when generating eight-bit keyboard input.

       -kls   Generate locking shifts (SO/SI) for keyboard input.

       -gl gn Set the initial assignment of GL.  The argument should be one of g0, g1, g2 or  g3.
              The default depends on the locale, but is usually g0.

       -gr gk Set  the  initial  assignment  of  GR.   The  default depends on the locale, and is
              usually g2 except for EUC locales, where it is g1.

       -g0 charset
              Set the charset initially selected in G0.  The default depends on the  locale,  but
              is usually ASCII.

       -g1 charset
              Set the charset initially selected in G1.  The default depends on the locale.

       -g2 charset
              Set the charset initially selected in G2.  The default depends on the locale.

       -g3 charset
              Set the charset initially selected in G3.  The default depends on the locale.

       -ilog filename
              Log into filename all the bytes received from the child.

       -olog filename
              Log into filename all the bytes sent to the terminal emulator.

       -alias filename
              the locale alias file
              (default: /usr/share/X11/locale/locale.alias).

       --     End of options.

EXAMPLES

       The  most  typical  use of luit is to adapt an instance of XTerm to the locale's encoding.
       Current versions of XTerm invoke luit automatically when it is needed.  If you  are  using
       an older release of XTerm, or a different terminal emulator, you may invoke luit manually:

              $ xterm -u8 -e luit

       If  you  are  running  in  a UTF-8 locale but need to access a remote machine that doesn't
       support UTF-8, luit can adapt the remote output to your terminal:

              $ LC_ALL=fr_FR luit ssh legacy-machine

       Luit is also useful with applications that hard-wire an encoding that  is  different  from
       the  one  normally  used  on  the  system  or  want  to  use  legacy  escape sequences for
       multilingual output.  In particular, versions of Emacs that do not speak  UTF-8  well  can
       use luit for multilingual output:

              $ luit -encoding 'ISO 8859-1' emacs -nw

       And then, in Emacs,

              M-x set-terminal-coding-system RET iso-2022-8bit-ss2 RET

FILES

       /usr/share/X11/locale/locale.alias
              The file mapping locales to locale encodings.

SECURITY

       On  systems with SVR4 (“Unix-98”) ptys (Linux version 2.2 and later, SVR4), luit should be
       run as the invoking user.

       On systems without SVR4 (“Unix-98”) ptys  (notably  BSD  variants),  running  luit  as  an
       ordinary  user  will  leave the tty world-writable; this is a security hole, and luit will
       generate a warning (but still accept to run).  A possible solution is to  make  luit  suid
       root;  luit  should  drop  privileges  sufficiently early to make this safe.  However, the
       startup code has not been exhaustively audited, and the author takes no responsibility for
       any resulting security issues.

       Luit will refuse to run if it is installed setuid and cannot safely drop privileges.

BUGS

       None of this complexity should be necessary.  Stateless UTF-8 throughout the system is the
       way to go.

       Charsets with a non-trivial intermediary byte are not yet supported.

       Selecting alternate sets of control characters is not supported and will never be.

SEE ALSO

       xterm(1), unicode(7), utf-8(7), charsets(7).
       Character Code Structure and Extension Techniques (ISO 2022, ECMA-35).
       Control Functions for Coded Character Sets (ISO 6429, ECMA-48).

AUTHOR

       The version of Luit included in this X.Org Foundation release was  originally  written  by
       Juliusz  Chroboczek  <jch@freedesktop.org> for the XFree86 Project and includes additional
       contributions from Thomas E. Dickey required for newer releases of xterm(1).