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Magit uses Horizontal Ellipsis unicode escape "\u2026" (which should display as "...") to mark hidden section. How can I configure the Terminal/Emacs to display them when running in terminal mode (option -nw)? The escape string is shown instead of the visual icon. Maybe I need to install a special font? I'm running emacs 26.1 running inside KDE Kconsole terminal emulator.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I found that I missed this in my .emacs.d configuration:

;; UTF-8 support
(prefer-coding-system       'utf-8)
(set-default-coding-systems 'utf-8)
(set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8)
(set-keyboard-coding-system 'utf-8)    
(setq x-select-request-type '(UTF8_STRING COMPOUND_TEXT TEXT STRING))

(from here). The other possibility is to 

(setq magit-section-visibility-indicator  '("..." . t))

instead (3 char string istead of one unicode char). KDE Konsole itself does support the \u2026 char as can be seen when printing the utf-8 sequence:

printf "\xe2\x80\xa6"
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  • Thanks. This solved some broader terminal issues for me where output appeared all garbled. I hadn't until now figured out where the problem was exactly, but this solved it.
    – Gijs
    Feb 7, 2020 at 9:23
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When running in -nw mode, Emacs' display is at the mercy of the terminal emulator. If the emulator is using a font which doesn't have a glyph for the character you want to display, the only solution is to change it to use a different font.

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    That's true, but it doesn't answer the question. The terminal emulator decides between showing … and something like � and Emacs has no way to know which one it is AFAIK. Emacs decides whether to attempt to display … or to display \uNNNN.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Jul 5, 2019 at 5:57
  • I fail to see how it doesn't answer the question: the font being used is missing a glyph. Switching to a different font will fix that. (and it's magit deciding to use the unicode sequence, not Emacs)
    – rpluim
    Jul 5, 2019 at 9:02
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    No, if Emacs displays \uNNNN in a terminal, that's because Emacs has decided to display \uNNNN. This has nothing to do with the font used in the terminal. If Emacs decided to display the character … and the font didn't have this character, you'd see something like � instead, the terminal would not substitute \uNNNN.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Jul 5, 2019 at 11:16

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