Try this LANG=it_IT xterm -e vim (Should give you Italian messages) or LANG=ja_JP gvim (Japanese messages *and* menus) or this LANG=pl_PL.utf8 LC_CTYPE=pl_PL.UTF-8 xterm -fn "-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--18-120-100-100-C-90-ISO10646-1" -e vim "+set keymap=greek_utf-8" (Polish messages, with greek keymapping so Polish people can type greek characters in an UTF-8 file) etc. None of these work. In none of the rh versions: 7.3, 7.2, 7.1 .. I found out when I needed to change the keymap to enter text in another language. In fact it turned out that redhat simply `forgot' to install all kind of files. Maybe because some lines in the spec file got so convoluted that nobody dared touch it ? What really amazes me is that this apparently went undetected for so long .. 1) none of rh users uses the best editor in the world ? 2) none of rh users uses anything but LANG=en_US ? 3) none of rh users bothers to file a bug report ? 4) nobody at rh watches the competition (PLD, mandrake have working versions) ? 4) ?? Anyway the only point I can influence myself is 3). I've put up a src.rpm on http://lanceerplaats.nl/downloads/SRPMS/vim-6.1-3.src.rpm I'll only leave it there untill after a few downloads. OBdisclaimer: It works for me, I do not work for redhat. Note you need to *at least* change --with-compiledby .. You can easily see by comparing the spec files that it really is not that different .. Regards, Harold.
Actually none of your possible reasons are the case - (2) comes close though, I use LANG=C. ;) Fixed in 6.1-7