Vim 7.3 with unicode on Ubuntu

Question

I installed Vim 7.3 on my Ubuntu machine, and unicode was not compiled in by default. What's the configuration option to enable unicode when you compile vim 7.3? I've searched their website and the internet, and I can't find it for the life of me. That said, it's probably right underneath my nose.

Answer 1

It is --enable-multibyte.

Answer 2

The first thing to do is to check the output of the ":version" command and look for "multi_byte". It should be preceded by a + if it is included, and a - if it is not. "multi_lang" is also important, but to a slightly lesser degree. Alternatively you can do:

:echo has('multi_byte') has('multi_lang')

And Vim will print "1"s to indiciate the features are included, or "0"s otherwise.

If those are included then you need to make sure Vim is set up properly. The first thing to try is to put ":set encoding=utf-8" in your ~/.vimrc.

If that doesn't work and you're using Vim in a terminal (in other words, not gVim), start Vim and type ":set termencoding?". If your system language settings are properly configured for unicode/utf-8 it should either be empty ("termencoding=") or set to utf-8 ("termencoding=utf-8").

It would probably be a good idea to look at ":help mbyte.txt" and possibly ":help usr_45".

Answer 3

You might have had set encoding=utf-8 in your system-wide vimrc that isn't being used when you manually compiled. Try adding that to your $MYVIMRC. See :help unicode for more information.

Answer 4

Unicode is enabled by default!