Turn off unicode symbols for Linux TTY

[meskarune]

Hello, I have a feature request to turn off the unicode symbols and use ascii for linux TTY. It could be done with something like this:

if [[ ${TERM} == "linux" ]]; then
    GIT_PROMPT_SYMBOL="%{$fg[green]%}git:"
    GIT_PROMPT_CLEAN="%{$fg_bold[green]%}-"
    GIT_PROMPT_AHEAD="%{$fg_bold[yellow]%}> NUM"
    GIT_PROMPT_BEHIND="%{$fg_bold[yellow]%}< NUM"
    GIT_PROMPT_MERGING="%{$fg_bold[magenta]%}Y"
    GIT_PROMPT_UNTRACKED="${fg_alert}!"
    GIT_PROMPT_MODIFIED="${fg_alert}+"
    GIT_PROMPT_STAGED="%{$fg_bold[blue]%}="
else
    GIT_PROMPT_SYMBOL="%{$fg[green]%} "
    GIT_PROMPT_CLEAN="%{$fg_bold[green]%}✔ "
    GIT_PROMPT_AHEAD="%{$fg_bold[yellow]%}🡩 NUM "
    GIT_PROMPT_BEHIND="%{$fg_bold[yellow]%}behind: 🡫 NUM "
    GIT_PROMPT_MERGING="%{$fg_bold[magenta]%}🜉 "
    GIT_PROMPT_UNTRACKED="${fg_alert}✗ "
    GIT_PROMPT_MODIFIED="${fg_alert}➕ "
    GIT_PROMPT_STAGED="%{$fg_bold[blue]%}🟓 "
fi

I have this working with a zsh prompt I wrote from scratch: https://gist.github.com/meskarune/6a647b067de3addd045f11c07aaf1cfc

I sometimes need to use my computer with a TTY and with unicode it messes up the prompt. This way you can detect if it's a TTY and still have a usable prompt.

edit: here is a list of unicode symbols and ascii characters that could be used:

Unicode: branch:  ⎇ clean: ✔ — untracked: ✗ X modified files: ➕ 🜂 𝌀 staged: 🟓 🗲 🔀 merge: 🜉 𝈠 🝓 ahead: 🡩 𝌁 behind: 🡫 𝌃

Ascii: branch: git: , # clean: -- , ok , ~~ untracked: ! , X , % modified files: + , ... , * staged: = , O , S merge: Y , {{ , >> , |- ahead: > NUM, ^ NUM behind: < NUM, v NUM

[jpo-joyent]

Might want to detect if the locale is *.UTF-8 instead, since that would be consistent with how other utilities decide whether to use special chars or not, and would not require special-casing TERM values.

As far as I'm aware, there is no "supports utf8" termcap bit.

I believe the correct (consistent with POSIX) behavior would be checking LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG in that order.

[burnettk]

if your linux terminal supports utf8, and if it's displaying the unicode characters, but they are printing on top of each other, try a different font.

[meskarune]

@burnettk The default linux TTY doesn't support unicode characters

[burnettk]

@meskarune cool cool. i just wanted to comment just in case anyone reading this experiences the same thing i did.