From: gaizin@...
Date: 2005-10-25T17:52:02+09:00
Subject: ruby-xosd problem: no Japanese unless readline is first called

Using Ruby 1.8.3 with libxosd2-ruby 0.4 (also tried ruby-xosd 1.1.0), I
run into trouble with the following simple program:

   ----------------------------
   #!/usr/bin/env ruby
   $KCODE="UTF8"

   require "xosd"

   text = "何だ"

   osd = Xosd.new(3)
   osd.timeout=5
   osd.font = "-sazanami" # or any other Japanese-capable font
   osd.align = "center"
   osd.valign = "middle"
   osd.display("what", 0)
   osd.display(text, 1)
   osd.display("what", 2)
   osd.wait
   ----------------------------

The code should, using the XOSD library, display three lines in the
middle of the screen, with the first and third displaying "what" and
the second displaying "何だ" (nan da). When the code is run through
irb or the ruby debugger ('ruby -r debug'), it works as expected.
However, when run normally (either with just 'ruby' or as a standalone
script), only the English "what" lines appear.

After experimenting with debug.rb, I found that first making a call to
readline, as show below, solves the problem:

   require 'readline'
   input = Readline::readline()

.... however, this is of course not really acceptable/practical, as it
causes the program to wait for an initial input.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be? What is readline
doing that is fixing the problem?

- Lance F.