How to configure PuTTY to display these characters?

26

16

☢ ☍ ⌘ ✰ ⣿ ⚡ ☯ ⚑  ↺  ⤴  ⤵ blabla

I need to display symbols above in Windows 7 using proportional fonts. However, some symbols are not properly displayed. This particular example is using Courier New.

damn it!

I have English(US) set in my regional settings.

Update:

The ultimate goal is to show in PuTTY this

enter image description here

As you can see on the left side there are many special chars.

Now see what I get with DejaVu Mono font.

DejaVu Mono

This one with Courier New

Courier New

This one with Consolas

Consolas

This one with Inconsolata

Inconsolata

This is test output with DejaVu Sans Mono.

enter image description here Click here to enlarge

Now compare those with the screenshot right below Update

Pablo

Posted 2012-02-25T03:13:11.417

Reputation: 4 093

https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/putty-configuration/ – endolith – 2016-08-15T04:21:18.243

Not all fonts support all symbols - are you looking for a proportional font with wide symbol support, or a way to get these characters in a particular font? – dsolimano – 2012-02-25T03:16:14.190

@dsolimano: Proportional font with wide symbol support, because I need to see those symbols in Putty. Moreover, it has to be Unicode font. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T03:19:13.330

I think you mean monospace not proportional (Courier New is a monospace font). – jhenninger – 2012-02-25T03:27:30.793

Fixed width in other words ) – Pablo – 2012-02-25T03:38:19.703

I’m confused, why can’t you just use Courier New if it has the glyps you need?

– Synetech – 2012-02-25T04:19:45.217

@Synetech: plz see my update and thanks for editing title. I originally thought it's possible to simplify the question, but looks like it's more complex. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T04:36:01.377

You only need to set the font in PuTTY, but the trick is finding a good font that has the glyphs you need. Where did you get the screenshot of Notepad? Did you make it yourself or find it on the Internet? Also, what is the app in the first screenshot (purple title bar)? Where did you get that screenshot? – Synetech – 2012-02-25T04:39:24.867

@Synetech: it's my PC, where Putty also is running. Just copied the glympses to my notepad. The app is Pyroscope, which is rtorrent extension. It is terminal app. Screenshot from wiki http://code.google.com/p/pyroscope/wiki/ScreenShotGallery

– Pablo – 2012-02-25T04:43:38.013

You might want to try some of the fonts listed here. They support the High Voltage symbol, which is one of the two Courier New appears to have trouble with. Segoe UI Symbol works, but it's not monospaced. Really, DejaVu Sans Mono should have worked (see WakiMiko's answer below). Oddly enough, this lists those arrows your DejaVu screenshot is struggling with as existing in DejaVu Serif, not DejaVu Sans. They seem to work in DejaVu Sans for me.

– Bob – 2012-02-25T04:56:13.510

Make sure putty is set to utf-8, if it isn't. – Rob – 2012-02-25T05:04:53.353

@Bob: DejaVu Sans Mono really doesn't work for me, could it mean there is something else in the system/Putty/shell env vars to tweak? – Pablo – 2012-02-25T05:06:10.233

@Rob: it's set to UTF-8. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T05:06:44.787

Answers

9

Everson Mono works in PuTTY (a very important condition; many other fonts work, e.g. in konsole) for all the characters you posted. Doing a full test with the Python script, however, reveals a block that isn't quite right.

python -c 'print u"\u22c5 \u22c5\u22c5 \u201d \u2019 \u266f \u2622 \u260d \u2318 \u2730 " \
u"\u28ff \u26a1 \u262f \u2691 \u21ba \u2934 \u2935 \u2206 \u231a \u2240\u2207 \u2707 " \
u"\u26a0\xa0\u25d4 \u26a1\xa0\u21af \xbf \u2a02 \u2716 \u21e3 \u21e1  \u2801 \u2809 " \
u"\u280b \u281b \u281f \u283f \u287f \u28ff \u2639 \u2780 \u2781 \u2782 \u2783 \u2784 " \
u"\u2785 \u2786 \u2787 \u2788 \u2789 \u25b9\xa0\u254d \u25aa \u26af \u2692 \u25cc " \
u"\u21c5 \u21a1 \u219f \u229b \u267a ".encode("utf8")'

Everson Mono on PuTTY to a virtual Kubuntu machine

To use Everson Mono on PuTTY it may be necessary to tick the Allow selection of variable-pitch fonts box in Window -> Appearance -> Font settings section.

Other fonts, such as DejaVu Sans Mono, work perfectly in other programs, possibly borrowing glyphs from other files (I'm not sure how TT fonts work), which doesn't seem to work in PuTTY. Code2000 should have worked, but it did something... odd... to my PuTTY window. It may work for you. Every font I've tried works directly in konsole, even those that should not. It might be worth looking into an alternative client/emulator.

Bob

Posted 2012-02-25T03:13:11.417

Reputation: 51 526

OK so far this one is closest, although some glyphses are very unclear even if I set font size to 16 and also cyrillic letters looks not proportional (one is bigger than another). But we are almost there. I would appreciate if someone can point to similar font which more looks like to inconsolate - clear and distinguishable even with small sizes. Thanks Bob, I will upvote your answer. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T11:17:32.407

Anyway, I will accept your answer and repost another question with precise unicode font character ranges. I've tried all listed in Wiki, seems I need to find commercial one. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T12:49:15.820

17

What you need to do is to set the font (Figure 1) and encoding (Figure 2) in PuTTY.

The font in your screenshot is Inconsolata (get the OTF file and copy it to your Windows Fonts folder). (PyroScope suggests DejaVu Sans Mono for Windows. Get dejavu-fonts-ttf-2.33.zip, extract the four DejaVuSansMono*.ttf files, and copy them to the Windows Fonts folder.)

The encoding to use is UTF-8.


Figure 1: Set the font:

PuTTY font set to Deja Vu Sans Mono

Figure 2: Set the encoding:

PuTTY encoding set to UTF-8

Synetech

Posted 2012-02-25T03:13:11.417

Reputation: 63 242

I'm using 'Oh My ZSH' and I tried both 'Everson Mono' and 'Deja Vu'. 'Deja Vu' seems to be the correct font for the default theme at least. – krowe – 2014-06-23T19:27:35.870

I started off with inconsolata(8-10), but the antialiasing is bugging the eyes, moving to dejavu sans mono 8, and this looks just like my arch linux box now too. really crisp, a slight anti alias effect, that i still dont like it still apparent barely, but for the most part, this is the best font i have seen on putty. (i prefer incolsolatas, but on putty it just doesnt cut it for me) – Brian Thomas – 2016-05-26T20:00:16.990

Which font exactly? I have tried both you mentioned, see my update. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T04:31:50.650

with Inconsalata it's even more crippled, not even saying that Cyrillic chars are gone... see my update screenshot. Putty is set to UTF-8. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T05:23:34.767

That's the problem... See my screenshot update. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T05:40:10.627

1Deja Vu Mono Sans + UTF-8 doesn’t work? – Synetech – 2012-02-25T05:41:13.493

No it does not. Screenshot reflects python test output as per Pyroscope suggestion. Half of the symbols are crippled. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T05:44:19.747

11

I checked the accepted solution, however, on my machine, putty doesn't show Everson Mono or DejaVu Sans Mono in its font list. (There must have been something wrong with my system configuration).

Besides, I don't like to change my favorite monospaced font.

After some Googling, I found a more preferable solution:

Add (or Edit) an multi-string value for your preferred font under the Windows registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontLink\SystemLink

The added (or edited) key name should be the font name, and the value associated is a list of fallback font options to display the characters not recognized by previous font. There should be some existing ones, you can copy the value from there.

For me, I added an entry:

Monaco -> 
    msyh.ttf,Microsoft YaHei Regular
    SIMSUN.TTC,SimSun
    MINGLIU.TTC,PMingLiU
    MSGOTHIC.TTC,MS UI Gothic
    BATANG.TTC,Batang

Reboot and now Putty is able to show the Unicode characters correctly:

oh-my-zsh prompt

Arie Xiao

Posted 2012-02-25T03:13:11.417

Reputation: 221

You have to "Allow selection of variable pitch fonts". It doesn't recognize Everson Mono as monospace for some reason. Still doesn't show the characters correctly for me with that font, though. – endolith – 2016-08-15T03:56:39.993

I had to reboot in order to get Windows 10 and PuTTY to display the fallback. YMMV. – Antonius Bloch – 2016-11-07T05:40:43.320

@AntoniusBloch Yes, a system reboot is required. – Arie Xiao – 2016-11-13T05:31:21.607

2

DejaVu Sans Mono works for me. Of course there are other fonts out there that will work just as well.

enter image description here

EDIT: If you are running rtorrent in screen, make sure to set screen to use utf8 too.

jhenninger

Posted 2012-02-25T03:13:11.417

Reputation: 1 461

Links is broken – antogerva – 2017-03-05T20:00:47.297

I've updated my original post. Still looking for proper font to display as close as possible what I see in screenshot. – Pablo – 2012-02-25T04:01:38.457