Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] The future of framebuffer

[Nick K. <nic...@ma...>]

Hello, Sven!
On Thu, 27 Sep 2001 15:47:20 +0200, you wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 02:09:56PM +0400, Nick Kurshev wrote:
> > Hello, GOTO!
> > On Thu, 27 Sep 2001 18:25:19 +0900, you wrote:
> > 
> > > Hi, 
> > > 
> > > At Thu, 27 Sep 2001 09:59:52 +0400,
> > > Nick Kurshev <nic...@ma...> wrote:
> > > > > At Wed, 26 Sep 2001 12:40:47 +0400,
> > > > > Nick Kurshev <nic...@ma...> wrote:
> > > > > > 2. What about NLS support?
> > > > > > Since I have localized linux distribution - I can not read
> > > > > > any messages which is written not in English.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Is this console program or kernel issue?
> > > > > fbcon is ready for single byte characters, and
> > > > > jfbterm is ready for more complex language like UTF, EUC, ISO-2022.
> > > > > Also console-tools is becoming ready for single byte characters and
> > > > > UTF-8. But I've never seen multibyte characters with default
> > > > > terminal (with console-tools).
> > > > > 
> > > > > -- gotom
> > > > > 
> > > > As I see NLS depends on drivers/video/font_8x??.c which were generated by cpi2font.
> > > > Curently Linux has only english version of these files.
> > > 
> > > Right. Currently there is only ISO-8859-1 characters.
> > > Is it useful to add more characters for ISO-8859-x or
> > > KOI-8 people ?
> > > I'm interesting, but I don't know whether there are some demands or not.
> > > 
> > > But, adding more complex characters like EUC and ISO-2022
> > > is more difficult, because they are multibyte characters.
> > > Handling them is some more hack.
> > > Their character file is very big because their font have
> > > more than 30000. Full or partial UTF-8 support invites
> > > this problem. These days linux has large nls file in fs/nls,
> > > so I think it's ok, but someone complain about this issue...
> > > 
> > > -- gotom
> > > 
> > I guess - it's big problem. Indeed linux should has full collections
> > of different fonts. But it will make distributive too huge.
> > IMHO it would be better to move out such packages (like fbdev) from kernel
> 
> Huh, why move all the fbdev out, the only thing you need to modularize is the
> fonts used, not the fbdev.
> 
Because it can be compiled independedly from kernel. Because it is like mini-X.
IMHO kernel should have only minimal part of drivers. (finely only set of drivers which
should be compiled into kernel for normal working) but such thing as framebuffer, audio
drivers and many other things could be safety moved from kernel out and be as satellite
projects.

> BTW, can't we generate the fonts from the ones used by vgacon ?
> 
As I've found that linux doesn't contain character images except framebuffer's font files.
But we can use fs/nls to convert DOS .cpi files to linux fonts. (Since on russian system
DOS uses 866 codepage but Linux koi8-r). But in this case linux package will large of
X package :( But IMHO it would be better th hove possibility to use dos.cpi files directly
from Linux with iconv functionallity.
> Friendly,
> 
> Sven Luther
> 


Best regards! Nick