This is probably a trivial problem with a trivial solution, but I can't find any examples on choosing fonts in Perl/Tk. So here's a whittled-down example of my problem.

This script WORKS FINE in Win32 using ActivePerl 5.8.4.

But on Solaris and Linux, a very small number of Chinese characters do not appear properly (in items 124, 125, and 128 in the pulldown menu). Is there a simple explanation for this?

My guess is that, in Windows, the default font happens to cover the Chinese characters I'm using. But since I'm not specifying any particular font in the script, the default font for Solaris/Linux does not cover all the Chinese characters I am using (which would partially explain why it took so long to come back after selecting Chinese characters).

So the simple question is ... how do I specify fonts for Perl/Tk and will this fix the problem?

Another question, was this a decent method of coding or is there a better way? Seems I'll have flexibility issues if I want configurable menu entries (based on user-selections from the menu) because I can't put if-else control inside a menuitem definition.

Thanks,
Perl/Tk novice

(Jan 10: Code replaced with this shorter example -- shockers) 

#!/bin/env perl -w
use Tk;
use Tk::Menu;
use Encode::Unicode;
use strict; 

my $exit_val = 0;
my $menubar;
my $menuitems; 
my $top; 

my %code =
   (
      60 => "Contactor Repair     | \x{4FEE}\x{593E}\x{8173}",
     120 => "Change Cleaning Disk | \x{66F4}\x{63DB}\x{786C}\x{789F}",
     180 => "Change Loadboard     | \x{66F4}\x{63DB}\x{6E2C}\x{8A66}\x
+{677F}",
     240 => "Change LN2           | \x{66F4}\x{63DB}\x{6DB2}\x{614B}\x
+{6C2E}",
   ); 

#----- Main ----------------------------

$top =  new MainWindow;
$top -> title ("Select");
$top -> geometry ("200x50+10+10"); 

$menuitems =
[
  [Cascade => "SELECT", -menuitems =>
  [
    [ Button => "$code{ 60}", -font => "courier", -command => [\&exit_
+r,  60] ],
    [ Button => "$code{120}", -font => "courier", -command => [\&exit_
+r, 120] ],
    [ Button => "$code{180}", -font => "courier", -command => [\&exit_
+r, 180] ],
    [ Button => "$code{240}", -font => "courier", -command => [\&exit_
+r, 240] ],
  ]
  ],
]; # end menuitems

$menubar = $top->Menu (-menuitems => $menuitems);
$top->configure(-menu => $menubar);

MainLoop; 

exit ($exit_val); 

sub exit_r
{
  $exit_val = shift;
  $top -> destroy;
}

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In reply to Chinese fonts problem in Perl/Tk by shockers

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