How to make unicode symbols and truetype fonts work in xterm/uxterm

.ttffontsunicodexterm

I'd like to use a truetype font in xterm/uxterm (version 278) but I get problems with unicode symbols (é for example displays fine, so I guess it's not a disabled utf8 or a locale issue):

$ echo -e "\xE2\x98\xA0"

gives me a square instead of ☠ with following config:

UXTerm*faceName: Liberation Mono
UXTerm*faceSize: 9
XTerm*faceName: Liberation Mono
XTerm*faceSize: 9

When I disable truetype fonts using the ctrl right click menu, the symbol displays fine using the default fonts which isn't nice at all. I tried uxrvt and got the same problem when I don't have enough letter spacing, but it works fine when I increase it. However, uxrvt gave me a lot of other problems, just like all the other terminal emulators I tried. Does anybody have an idea?

Best Answer

The Liberation font doesn't seem to have this symbol. But using XTerm*faceName: DejaVu Sans Mono (which is also a truetype font) allows ☠ to be displayed.

EDIT: Do not use LibreOffice or OpenOffice to determine whether a glyph is supported in a font, as it silently falls back to another font: OpenOffice bug 45128.

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