Microcai | 26 Nov 2010 11:02
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[PATCH 1/2] Kernel fbcon UNICODE font support

Hi, 

 I know there are most people speaking only English, and never meet
non-ASCII characters on console. But, hey , what about others ?
 Then, some of you may come up with a idea than ,there is already fbterm
than supports non-ASCII characters in user-space.
 But, what if you forgot to run fbterm ? And what about some program
that must be run on native tty console ? Or I just want init script
display fine Native Language?

 So, here is the solution: Making framebuffer console handle UNICODE font in
kernel.
 The first thing I need to handle is that, currently there is no room
for adding UNICODE font, only 8bit for characters, how can you do?
 Also , some characters are double-width. So the solution is  make an
backing store. 0xFE and 0xFF stands for character value store else
where, and 0xFF means , left-half of the else where character, and 0xFE
means right-half of the else where character. 

 This is a basic solution, the best is that making vc->vc_screenbuf
store full UNICODE/attribute value, But changing it may break some
drivers, so , currently I won't try that way. 

The UNICODE font just too large to be included in e-mail, please follow

http://minilab.tk/0002-add-cjk-font-that-has-65536-chars.patch to get
that.
This font is copyrighted by youbest <at> sina.com, also he is the original
author of this patch. I don't have a chance to reach him. If there be
any license issue, just re-generated from WenWuanYi(http://wenq.org/)
(Continue reading)

Alan Cox | 26 Nov 2010 11:09
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Re: [PATCH 1/2] Kernel fbcon UNICODE font support

>  I know there are most people speaking only English, and never meet
> non-ASCII characters on console. But, hey , what about others ?

Like the people who have never met Indic languages or half-space using
languages, or Arabic or right to left/left to right mixed or ...

>  So, here is the solution: Making framebuffer console handle UNICODE font in
> kernel.

It isn't really a solution - the rendering rules for Unicode are extremely
complex, this is why things like Pango exist to do it in user space.

Alan
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microcai | 26 Nov 2010 11:19
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Re: [PATCH 1/2] Kernel fbcon UNICODE font support

2010/11/26 Alan Cox <alan <at> lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>:
>>  I know there are most people speaking only English, and never meet
>> non-ASCII characters on console. But, hey , what about others ?
>
> Like the people who have never met Indic languages or half-space using
> languages, or Arabic or right to left/left to right mixed or ...
>
>>  So, here is the solution: Making framebuffer console handle UNICODE font in
>> kernel.
>
> It isn't really a solution - the rendering rules for Unicode are extremely
> complex, this is why things like Pango exist to do it in user space.
>
> Alan
>

Hey,  just support very basic rendering. that should fix most situations.
If ascii fits 90% situations, then this UNICODE support should fit 99%
situations. It don't make console display urgly glyph. Users who want
more complex  can simply choose gnome-terminal or konsole or blablalba
....
This maks it possible to quickly view an UTF-8 text without boring X.
Alan Cox | 26 Nov 2010 11:41
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Re: [PATCH 1/2] Kernel fbcon UNICODE font support

> This maks it possible to quickly view an UTF-8 text without boring X.

You can do that in user space too (see bogl). X boring or otherwise is
just an interface layer to the video.

Alan
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