howto : output utf-8(kannada) characters in windows terminal using java

Question

am working on a java(tomcat) app. that sometimes writes to stdout. But I notice that indic languages(say, kannada) turn out as ?????? characters on the std. windows console(terminal) on Windows Vista (SP1 Home premium 64-bit).

I know that I could run tomcat from within emacs(GNU Emacs 23.1.50.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.0.6001)) so I could see the tomcat console output from within emacs. Emacs renders kannada OK(although with errors).

But it would be nice if I could launch tomcat from outside of emacs if I could.

I realize that I could run tomcat from within eclipse as well (where you can control the console encoding) but again, it would be nice to launch tomcat from outside of eclipse, if I could.

So, what do developers who want to see their indic language (which takes 3 byte characters to render) do ? Also, What tail utilities do they use ?

I tried running the command chcp 65001. But after I do this, catalina.bat does NOT runat all (exits with no output) :-(

P.S : I'm running as "Administrator" user if that is of any help.

Thanks for any tips and pointers.

Answer 1

After much searching, I find that cmd.exe is NOT capable of printing indic characters!

Answer 2

You're restricted by the font used in the cmd. The font used simply doesn't have those glyphs available. You can hack the registry to add more fonts, but you still have to find a font which supports those glyphs. Rather let Tomcat log to a logfile and use a viewer which has fonts supporting those glyphs (e.g. Arial , Verdana, etc). You can try TailXP if you want file tailing in Windows.