Unicode characters in uxterm and dwm statusbar

Question

I would like to display Chinese characters in dwm's status bar. More specifically I would like the symbols to represent the different tags in dwm. Using an online converter, I found that the unicode representation for the symbols I want is:

憤怒
unicode: 憤怒

Putting the unicode characters directly into my config.h doesn't work, they don't even show up in vim. My locale is set to ISO-8859-1 and I'm using the Liberation Mono font for dwm.

What can I do to get those symbols up there?

EDIT Following Mat's instructions and patching dwm, the patch command hangs. Running strace:

[max@prometheus dwm-6.0]$ strace patch -Np1 ../dwm-pango/dwm-pango/dwm-6.0-pango.patch 
execve("/usr/bin/patch", ["patch", "-Np1", "../dwm-pango/dwm-pango/dwm-6.0-p"...], [/* 30 vars */]) = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x1d52000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f9dc4713000
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=92801, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 92801, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7f9dc46fc000
close(3)                                = 0
open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0`\25\2\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1983446, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 3804112, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x7f9dc4152000
mprotect(0x7f9dc42e9000, 2097152, PROT_NONE) = 0
mmap(0x7f9dc44e9000, 24576, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x197000) = 0x7f9dc44e9000
mmap(0x7f9dc44ef000, 15312, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f9dc44ef000
close(3)                                = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f9dc46fb000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f9dc46fa000
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f9dc46f9000
arch_prctl(ARCH_SET_FS, 0x7f9dc46fa700) = 0
mprotect(0x7f9dc44e9000, 16384, PROT_READ) = 0
mprotect(0x61a000, 4096, PROT_READ)     = 0
mprotect(0x7f9dc4714000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0
munmap(0x7f9dc46fc000, 92801)           = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x1d52000
brk(0x1d75000)                          = 0x1d75000
getpid()                                = 10412
lstat("/tmp/po8GP02f", 0x7fffdc075210)  = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
lstat("/tmp/pikSWXEs", 0x7fffdc075210)  = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
lstat("/tmp/prB1wVgF", 0x7fffdc075210)  = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
lstat("/tmp/pp27ATSR", 0x7fffdc075210)  = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
rt_sigaction(SIGCHLD, {SIG_DFL, [CHLD], SA_RESTORER|SA_RESTART, 0x7f9dc4186cb0}, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGHUP, NULL, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGHUP, {0x40cd90, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f9dc4186cb0}, NULL, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, NULL, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGPIPE, {0x40cd90, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f9dc4186cb0}, NULL, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGTERM, NULL, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGTERM, {0x40cd90, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f9dc4186cb0}, NULL, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGXCPU, NULL, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGXCPU, {0x40cd90, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f9dc4186cb0}, NULL, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGXFSZ, NULL, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGXFSZ, {0x40cd90, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f9dc4186cb0}, NULL, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGINT, NULL, {SIG_DFL, [], 0}, 8) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {0x40cd90, [], SA_RESTORER, 0x7f9dc4186cb0}, NULL, 8) = 0
fstat(0, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 2), ...}) = 0
open("/tmp/pp27ATSR", O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_EXCL|O_TRUNC, 0600) = 3
fcntl(3, F_GETFL)                       = 0x8002 (flags O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE)
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0600, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f9dc4712000
lseek(3, 0, SEEK_CUR)                   = 0
fstat(0, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 2), ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f9dc4711000
read(0, 

Could I be missing something?

Answer 1

I don't think you'll get Unicode support from dwm without patching it (and adding additional dependencies, notably pango).

If that's an option for you, the Arch package dwm-pango seems to work. (Download the tarball, unpack it, and patch your dwm with the patch file - you don't need to be using Arch. Patch applies with a bit of fuzz on top of dwm-0.6.)

$ tar xzf dwm-6.0.tar.gz 
$ tar xzf dwm-pango.tar.gz 
$ cd dwm-6.0
$ patch -Np1 < ../dwm-pango/dwm-6.0-pango.patch 

After that, you can edit your config file and put unicode literals (\u followed by the unicode codepoint in hex) in the tags strings for example.

/* tagging */
static const char *tags[] = { "\u00c0",
                              "\u61a4\u6012",
                              "\u10e5\u10d0\u10e0",
                              "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9" };

First item is À, second are your two symbols, third is some Georgian script ('cos I think it looks cool).

With a large font, this results in: