# c3270 Frequently Asked Questions

If you have a problem building, installing, or running c3270, please browse through this file first.

## General Questions

### Am I allowed to use it?

Yes. Full copyright information is in the Lineage file, but the gist is that anyone is free to use the code, and anyone is free to sell copies of the code.

You are also free to modify it and to redistribute it, provided you preserve the existing copyright notices.

### Why are notsign characters (and other accented characters) displayed as blanks or strings of garbage?

The most common cause of this is a problem with locales, in particular, the codeset (LC_CTYPE) in use. There could be a mismatch between the locale that the c3270 process is using and the locale supported by the terminal hardware or terminal emulation software that c3270 is running on. For example, c3270 may be running in a locale that uses UTF-8 encoding (e.g., en_US.UTF-8), while the terminal it is running on does not support UTF-8. Or it may be running on a terminal emulator (xterm, gnome-terminal that is running in a non-UTF-8 locale, such as en_US.ISO8859-1.

Use the show stats command at the c3270< prompt to display the locale codeset that the c3270 process is using.

Note that the locale conflict can easily arise when c3270 is run on a remote host, e.g., in an ssh session. The remote host (where the output is being generated) and the local host (where the output is being interpreted and displayed) can often have different default locales.

It is also possible that c3270 was built without UTF-8 support. In order to support UTF-8, c3270 must be built with an ncurses or curses library that supports wide characters. The show stats command will also indicate whether or not c3270 supports UTF-8.

## Getting Help

If you are still having a problem with c3270, feel free to send e-mail to Paul Mattes, Paul.Mattes@usa.net No guarantees are made about responses to particular problems, but a patches are usually forthcoming in a few days. It will also get you on an x3270 mailing list, which also includes information on c3270, and where you can find out about new releases and bug fixes.

When you send a question about c3270, please include the following information. It makes it much easier to narrow down the problem.

1. The version of c3270 you are using, including all patches, e.g., "3.3.6p1".
2. What kind of machine you are running on, e.g., "Sun SPARC-10".
3. What operating system you are running, and what version, e.g., "SunOS 4.1.3_U1" or "Irix 5.2". The "uname -a" command will usually provide this information.

Complaints, suggestions, requests for enhancements, and porting experiences are also welcome. Code changes for bug fixes and enhancements are also welcome, provided that you don't mind your code being placed (often anonymously) under the x3270 license.